Kate McClymont - He Who Must Be Obeid: The Untold Story

Queensland had the Fitzgerald Inquiry and the Moonlight State. New South Wales has Eddie Obeid.

Meet Australias most corrupt politician whose brazen misdeeds were said to be on a scale unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps.

From the shadows Obeid ran the state as his fiefdom, making and unmaking premiers.

His tentacles stretched through all levels of government, encircling almost every precious resource - coal leases, Circular Quay cafes, marinas, even the states water. All of them were secret money-spinners for Obeid and his family.

Above ground, below ground, in the air, on the water, there was no domain beyond Obeids grasp. Now, many of the key politicians of his era have given a candid account of Obeids pernicious backroom influence.

Following their groundbreaking investigations, the award-winning journalists Kate McClymont and Linton Besser have unearthed the vast but secret empire Obeid built over decades, producing an authoritative account of how he got away with so much for so long.

An invitation to Passy, one of the grandest estates in Sydney, was until recently an admission to a secretive inner world of money and power, where clandestine deals were conceived not over fine wine and delicacies but with fried chicken from Red Rooster and dessert from Donut King.

The imposing heritage-listed sandstone edifice, one of the states finest homes, sits on more than 4200 square metres of garden in the blue-ribbon suburb of Hunters Hill. In a real estate-obsessed city like Sydney, where bricks and mortar are the ultimate gauge of success, the house is an incontrovertible testament to its owners wealth and status.

Built as an abode befitting the nations first French consul-general, and later occupied by New South Wales Premier Sir George Dibbs, the most recent lord of the manor is a Lebanese immigrant and former taxi driver who rose to become the states richest and most influential member of parliament. Edward Moses Obeid, OAM, was also the most corrupt politician the country has ever seen.

Today, the garden is unkempt and overgrown and the inside of the once-famed home is losing its lustre the tapestried sofas frayed, the flock wallpaper faded. The Obeids tribe of grandchildren run amok each Sunday at the familys weekly gathering, and the house has succumbed to the gradual ruin associated with young children.

Eddie Obeid and his wife, Judy, have shelved their $2.5 million plans for a two-storey pool pavilion, a cinema, conservatory and an underground garage for nine cars. So too, a secret deal to have all power cables in Hunters Hill buried underground because Obeid deemed the ones outside his house an eyesore. For the first time in a long time, the money and the influence are drying up.

On a crisp winters afternoon in July 2013, the Obeid family matriarch walked briskly down the gravel circular driveway of her home. Judy Obeid, her customary gold crucifix around her neck and her dark hair set in neat waves, dispensed some words of wisdom to a throng of reporters who had gathered outside Passys tall, filigreed metal gates. What should we do, well just go to court. Weve done nothing wrong Were a good Christian family, we have all top values in life and thats how weve brought our children up, she said.

For months, the public had been shocked by the grubby details emerging from an explosive public inquiry into her husband and children and the crooked mining tender that netted them $30 million. The press wanted answers. Earlier that day, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) had released a report that found that Judy Obeids five sons, Damian, Paul, Moses, Gerard and Eddie Junior, were either liars or otherwise not to be believed and that her husband, Eddie, and middle son, Moses, were found to have acted corruptly. The findings also suggested some of them could end up in jail.

Weve done nothing wrong, Eddie Obeid barked at the journalists in his customary forceful language. This has been just a political witch hunt to have Labor ex-ministers in the public eye being scandalised and victimised and vilified.

But in Labors traditional working-class heartland, there would be little sympathy for the Obeids. Their ill-gotten gains had been spent acquiring palatial homes and flashy cars, and supporting the lavish lifestyle to which they had all grown accustomed. For seven years, it was quite usual for Mrs Obeid herself to be handed a bundle of cash each week totalling $1000. The family called it housekeeping money. Judy Obeid told investigators she hadnt the faintest idea where all the money came from, including $450,000 used as a deposit on another $8.5 million Sydney home. In fact, it was just a crumb of the corrupt mine deal.

Judy Obeid may have not been overly curious about the source of her familys wealth, but she was certainly very superstitious about the bad luck that might one day take it away. Whenever she could, she would pin the evil eye to the backs of her grandchildrens clothes to ward off malevolent forces, which she believed were lurking everywhere. She also kept special bottles of holy water that she constantly sprinkled on her grandchildren as they ran through the rambling old mansion. It was the accidental consumption of Judy Obeids holy water, mistakenly offered as refreshment, which left her guests Nicki and Peter Fitzhenry with the worst bout of food poisoning they had ever experienced. For a week the couple lay in their beds, their throats raw from vomiting.

Nicki and Peter were Moses Obeids neighbours and good friends, and had been invited to one of the Obeids famed Sunday lunches, a day simply known by the family as Passy day. Judy and Eddie Obeids five sons and four daughters, their spouses and thirty-odd children were expected to come each week. It was by no means a glamorous spread. The long table was covered in plastic sheeting, paper plates and disposable cutlery. Dotted among the jumbo bottles of soft drink were aluminium trays of lasagne, tubs of takeaway chicken and colourful iced donuts. The children were not allowed to eat until the men, who all sat at one end of the table, were served. While the women did the cleaning up, Eddie and his sons and sons-in-law retired to the television room where they put their feet up and watched rugby league, some of them sprawled in Jason recliner rockers. If there was shop talk to attend to, sometimes Eddie would retire to his study, like a consigliere, to receive supplicants wanting an audience.

During the four years from 2006 that Moses Obeid and his wife, Nikki, lived next door to Peter and Nicki Fitzhenry, the two couples were the best of friends. When the fence between their houses was removed for repairs, they left it down because they enjoyed the easy access between the two houses.

But on one occasion after the school run, Nicki Fitzhenry, a tall striking blonde, arrived home with a bag of groceries to find a surprise. Sitting at her kitchen table was Moses Obeid, his father, Eddie, another Labor minister and a senior police officer. I walked in, I obviously got a shock when I heard voices in the house and Moses ran out and said to me that he, Dad[sic] wanted a meeting and they needed to use the kitchen and was that okay, she told the ICAC in November 2012. I said it was fine obviously and I put the bags down in the kitchen and then I left. They had been using her house, Moses later told her, because they knew they wouldnt be seen. Presumably they were also concerned their homes were bugged, as they had their houses routinely swept for listening devices.