Developer Hilton Grugeon tells Icac he paid for MP's adviser, but it was all legal
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Version 0 of 1. A property developer has admitted stumping up $10,000 for radio personality Luke Grant to work on former MP Tim Owen’s election campaign. Hilton Grugeon also agreed he paid former MP Andrew Cornwell $10,120 for a painting by a Newcastle artist whose works usually sell for an average of $288. But it was all above board, he told the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) on Thursday. The Newcastle developer told the New South Wales corruption watchdog he was well aware in 2011 that, as a developer, he was barred from making political donations. But a month before that year’s NSW poll, he allegedly attended a meeting with Darren Williams from Nathan Tinkler’s development firm Buildev, along with the developer who would become Newcastle’s mayor, Jeff McCloy, where Owen’s campaign manager Hugh Thomson delivered “a sales pitch”. Thomson extracted a promise from Grugeon, the Icac heard, to better his candidate’s chances with thousands in assistance. “You came through with the pledge. You made $10,000 available to the Tim Owen campaign, didn’t you?” counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson SC asked. “No,” Grugeon replied. But he agreed he did pay radio man Luke Grant – or, the apparently perplexed witness wondered, “was it Hugh Grant?” – for media consultancy services rendered to Thomson. “[Thomson] said that it was legal because it wasn’t a donation,” Grugeon said. “The proposal was that I make that payment and that would not be be wrong under the law.” Grugeon also agreed that it was “most probably” ex-MP Andrew Cornwell who told him he, too, was struggling financially in the lead-up the NSW election, and that Grugeon might buy an artwork from his collection – a painting by one Rex Newell – to help him out. He snapped up the Australiana oil for $10,120. “I did it to show him support,” Mr Grugeon said. “I have never supported anyone for a favour.” “This was a fraud – a fraud in which you and Andrew Cornwell agreed to a means so that you could disguise the fact that you were making an illegal contribution,” Watson said. “I don’t understand that it’s a fraud,” Grugeon replied. Like Owen, Cornwell resigned earlier this month amid accusations arising from the Icac hearings. The NSW premier, Mike Baird, has conceded it may be very tough for the Liberal party to retain Owen and Cornwell’s seats. Both have traditionally been held by Labor and are expected to return to the party in upcoming byelections. Baird was asked on Thursday whether he was confident of retaining the seats. “I can understand that those communities are feeling very upset, betrayed and appalled,” he told reporters in Sydney. “I understand that that would be a very tough thing to do.” The Liberal Party holds Newcastle on a 2.6 per cent margin and Charlestown on 9.9 per cent. |