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6 - The protracted fall of Nathan Rees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2011

Rodney Cavalier
Rodney Cavalier
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
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Summary

Karl Bitar was home from California in time for the Saturday of negotiations ahead of Caucus on Sunday. Lots of precedents were being set. An agreed list of names had to go to the Right caucus. The ‘Left’ had already decided on its nominations. The new Premier and the General Secretary met at the Concord West home of Luke Foley, an emphatic tribute to Foley's effectiveness during the previous weeks. The meeting settled most of what went forward to the Right. Rees explained the role of Bitar:

You can imagine the machinations and the exchanges that have gone on. I have kept well and truly out of it from the outset. My instructions to NSW General Secretary Karl Bitar were: ‘You manage this process. You keep bringing me back the list and I'll keep sending it back to you until I've got a list I'm comfortable with.’

The Premier devolved to the General Secretary the role of co-ordinator general for the Right. Given the Right was incapable of providing a leadership contender and had fallen to pieces, Bitar was assuming the role that used to be played by Carr and Iemma, augmented down the years by the likes of John Aquilina, Michael Egan, Richard Amery, Paul Whelan, John Della Bosca as well as Obeid and Tripodi. The Premier was now in a position similar to Neville Wran: he was not a member of the Right, he did not belong to a faction.

Type
Chapter
Information
Power Crisis
The Self-Destruction of a State Labor Party
 , pp. 154 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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