Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Belmont city, or some may say the City of Belmont, is in my electorate of Swan. It is a city with lots of wonderful people who have lived there for a long, long time, and tonight I want to talk to them about a Trojan Horse in Belmont. But first I would like to raise why I have decided to do this speech.

On Friday I received a letter from the City of Belmont requesting an answer to a local and state issue that emanated from an amendment to a motion. The amendment was moved by Councillor Gardner. If Councillor Gardner had wanted to ask me a question—and it would not surprise me if it had been prompted by his father-in-law—he could have rung me, he could have rung my office or he even could have asked me at last Friday's citizenship ceremony, which we both attended. He did none of the above, but instead tried to use the council, through a motion, in a petty attempt to try to wedge me.

Anyway, let me get back to the Trojan Horse, known as the Belmont Community Group. While I am prompted by Councillor Gardner's motion to do this speech, I also think the City of Belmont's residents should know what is happening in their city and who is behind any organisations pretending to be something other than what they really are. On the weekend of 22 and 23 February there was an article in the Weekend Australian, in the 'Inquirer' section, by Ean Higgins titled 'Labor ignored early warnings of Thomson grime and slime'. As I was reading the article, I had a feeling of familiarity, that I had seen something similar to what was mentioned in the article about Thomson's campaign to win the federal seat of Dobell. The article outlines how Thomson had set up 'a sham front organisation called Coastal Voice'. It was a template from the ALP-union campaign book: the setting up of a community group to win over voters without identifying it as an ALP-union front. In Thomson's case it was called Coastal Voice. In Belmont's case it is called the Belmont Community Group.

According to the article in the Weekend Australian, Thomson launched Coastal Voice in 2006 as a concerned non-partisan resident who, with three other locals, set up an independent community lobby group, which we all know now it was not. He persuaded the Central Coast Mariners to support it; they did until they found out it was a front. The group was set up with most, if not all, committee members associated with the ALP or with a union. It was in fact launched by the previous member for Swan, Kim Beazley, which is something I am sure he now regrets. And guess what Thomson did when he was asked by the local paper about this supposed sham? He denied it. He also said he had no thoughts of running for parliament—more denials from Mr Thomson. Again, we now know this to be false. I am sure denial is a tactic that will also be used about this speech.

This group that Thomson started, as described in the article, just sounded too much like the recently started Belmont Community Group in my electorate. And when some residents came to me with concerns, I decided to do some investigations into this Trojan Horse. I recently received a copy of this group's first newsletter, which has a collection of articles mainly featuring people associated with the ALP. The newsletter is professionally done, and I am sure it would not have been cheap to print and deliver. The question is: who paid for it? That is the question all ratepayers of Belmont should ask. The newsletter is not authorised and does not state where it is printed, and even though the newsletter is blatantly political it fails to meet the standards for political literature.

In the 2013 state election, Cassie Rowe stood as the ALP candidate for the seat of Belmont, and for the first time in 100 years—or close to that—the seat of Belmont was lost by the ALP. It was a humiliating defeat for the ALP and the AWU supported candidate, as the following quote from the Crikey blog says:

Peter Kerr of the Australian Financial Review reported that Rowe had secured the backing of the Australian Workers Union, which had traditionally been weak in Western Australia but was looking to expand its reach. Kerr's report further spoke of a deal in which Rowe would receive Left support in exchange for the AWU supporting Simone McGurk's preselection in Fremantle.

The father of the candidate, Barry Rowe, had been an ALP minister and MLA for the seat of Essendon in Victoria for roughly 15 years before heading west and obviously has instilled his love of politics in both his daughters. Barry has a business called Frontier Capital—and I want you to remember that name, Frontier Capital. An ASIC search shows that its registered office and principal place of business is in Floreat—not in Belmont but in Floreat. It does have a post office box in Belmont, which could give it the appearance of operating from Belmont, but I have yet to see proof of that operation.

Anyway, the president of this ALP front, the Belmont Community Group, is none other than the Belmont ALP candidate, Cassie Rowe. In an article in the Southern Gazette dated 17 December 2013, Cassie was described as a 'longstanding resident of Belmont'. That was a description which stretched the truth, as no-one in Belmont had heard of her prior to her being parachuted in as the ALP candidate for the state election. Even the two Kevins, Kevin Bettridge and Kevin Watkins, wrote to the newspaper about their disappointment in a non-local ALP candidate. They are probably the most sensible letters I have seen them write. But the ever faithful Frank Lamp stoutly defended the former assistant state secretary of the Labor Party, Cassie Rowe, against those letters. Frank's reward for that was a picture on the front page of the first newsletter from that group.

When I and other people spoke to the journalist about her 'longstanding resident' description of Ms Rowe, the journalist said that she had not written that, but a subeditor of the paper had inserted it in her article without her permission, and she was embarrassed by it. Sarah Motherwell said she had had quite a few phone calls asking her about the description 'longstanding'. One resident commented that being somewhere for two minutes does not make you 'longstanding'. A week later in an article by the same journalist, she wrote that Ms Rowe, who was recommending to ratepayers and residents how to vote, did not disclose in the previous article that her husband—wait for it—was none other than Patrick Gardner, one of the council candidates, the councillor who wrote to me recently. She also failed to mention that Lauren Cayoun, another candidate, worked for Cassie's sister, Samantha Rowe, who is a state ALP MLC who has her office based in Belmont.

During the state election campaign, the two Rowe sisters set up a stall in the local shopping centre, misusing a government logo on the front of the desk, a picture of which they posted on a Facebook page and then quickly removed, but not before we managed to get a copy of that photo. We are starting to see the dots connect, the secrecy surrounding those dots and a pattern of being misleading developing. The shopping centre confirmed that they were misled.

I cannot understand why they do not all just declare that they are connected to the ALP and the unions and be proud of it. What are they hiding? Instead we see a pattern of nondisclosure very similar to that of Craig Thomson and Coastal Voice. In the newsletter, you are invited to join the community group online. As of 10 minutes ago, I have tried repeatedly to bring up that website, but alas it is down. It is great to see that membership is free, but that still raises the question: who is paying for the newsletters? Maybe we could ask the treasurer of the group? Guess who that is. It is none other than Councillor Gardner, who, in his campaign for council, announced that he was the treasurer of this group—yes, the same Patrick Gardner who is the husband of Cassie Rowe. When I could not log on to the website, I thought I had better check who registered the domain name. I found out that Frontier Capital, which I mentioned at the start of this speech, is the registrant of this particular domain name. And who is the technical contact for that registrant? Barry Rowe. It just keeps going.

The newsletter has some interesting articles and some photos. I would like to describe some of those to you now. On the front, there is obviously the previous one I mentioned: Frank Lamp, who is a longstanding member of the ALP. He is on the front page with Cassie Rowe and the article that states that she is a longstanding resident. Inside, we have another picture from the Islamic College school graduation, with Samantha Rowe and, again, Councillor Patrick Gardner and Councillor Lauren Cayoun. Then we have another picture from the Belmont students graduation night which shows the Hon. Samantha Rowe MLC and one of the students.

Then on the back page, we have pictures of the Christmas sundowner for Samantha Rowe MLC. There are photos of—guess who—Stephen Price, who is the Branch Secretary of the AWU in Western Australia; Louise Durack, the former ALP candidate for the seat of Stirling; and Cassie Rowe herself, obviously. Then we have Michelle Roberts MLA, an ALP member in the Western Australia parliament. In the pictures there we also have Sue Pethick, a union organiser, Senator Sue Lines, one of our ALP senators in the other place, and some other people.

So, as you can see, there are consistent and continuous connections to the ALP and the unions. On that basis, I would like to say that hopefully tonight the residents of Belmont have been informed. This Belmont community group is a Labor and union family. It has been my pleasure to inform the people of Belmont of these facts today.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:26