Sidelining Troubleshooter Grill - Cost State Labor the $25b Inpex Gas Project and GovernmentJim McGinty must be ruing the sidelining one of his perceived political rivals Julian Grill - as Labor's political negotiating weakness was exposed in the Inpex saga
The ironies the Desert Rat sees in the failure of the Carpenter Labor Government to secure a Kimberley site for the $25 billion Inpex Gas Project was that if Julian Grill was involved, the gas hub site would have been resolved.
Solving those types of problems formed about half of the troubleshooting work that Grill had been doing as a lobbyist for mining and energy companies. His main task it appears was overcoming problems resulting from the Labor government's negotiating ineptness. Grill work on mining and energy issues continually saved the Labor Government's bacon. Most Cabinet ministers were too stupid to realise it and those that knew, could not admit it publicly.
The Labor Government Ministers, their political advisers and the public service did not have the skills to negotiate a Kimberley site and the legion of other environmental problems confronted by business. Business needed people like Julian Grill who had the skills and that is the reason why the demand for lobbyists went "through the roof" under Labor.
Julian Grill, was unfortunately sidelined by the shenanigans of McGinty's Corruption and Crime Commission. The Inpex gas hub site negotiations drifted frustratingly for Inpex for years and they could not get a decision from the Labor Government.
There were many mining projects with issues that the ineffectual Labor Governments did not have the political will to resolve, particularly, environmental issues and Aboriginal matters that needed some political skill and negotiating sensitively to resolve. At least half of Grill's consultancies were related to environmental issues that mining companies could not get any decision from the State Labor Government.
Grill has superb negotiating skills and often successfully engineered win-win situation for both parties - where the Labor Government was paralysed for fear of alienating Aboriginal or environmental groups. That's why Grill was so much in demand. He resolved so many problems in this area, that without his efforts the Labor Government would have been "on the nose" years before the public began to sense it's inability to make decisions where Aboriginal or environmental issues were involved.
McGinty through his political pursuit of Grill and Burke and the CCC grubby campaign to discredit them and sideline them as troubleshooters / lobbyists, ensured the problems now remained unresolved and became running sores. The frustration in business grew as the myriad of problems lingered.
The Desert Rat often wondered how the Labor Government got away with it for so long. In the end they didn't because there was no one who could fix the problems they previously avoided.
The result was that Labor lost the election at a time of great prosperity for most and McGinty and others have lost their precious glass palaces - shattered by the electors who thought they needed a little bit of political fresh air in the electoral wilderness.
Another failure which can be sheeted home to Jim McGinty, the person who has had too much influence on the Labor Party in recent years and squandered it on internicine vendettas at the cost of the Party. Well done, Jim!
