Irate Iemma Gives Party Boss Cold Shoulder

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday April 25, 2007

Jonathan Pearlman

MORRIS IEMMA has fallen out with one of his closest confidants and the man who helped install him as Premier - the general secretary of the NSW Labor Party, Mark Arbib - amid continuing turmoil over the Paul Gibson affair.

Mr Iemma is understood to be angry that Mr Arbib pushed so hard for Mr Gibson to get into cabinet and has cut back on their regular contact.

One Labor source said Mr Iemma and Mr Arbib had hardly spoken in the past three weeks and Mr Iemma had been refusing to take Mr Arbib's calls.

Another said relations between them were tense. "There's unhappiness over the Gibson stuff," the source said. "I don't think it's a terminal split."

Mr Iemma has described the appointment of Mr Gibson as one of his biggest mistakes as Premier and admitted he was "persuaded" by Mr Arbib, who had "put his case" for the appointment.

The Premier and Mr Arbib played down the rift.

A spokesman for the Premier, Ben Wilson, said yesterday: "The Premier has been on holidays. He has an excellent working relationship with the general secretary."

Mr Arbib said he did not believe his relationship with Mr Iemma had changed.

"From my perspective, it is no different. Our relationship is the same as it always has been."

Mr Gibson was a last-minute addition to cabinet last month after Cherie Burton resigned.

But just hours before the cabinet was to be sworn in, Mr Iemma announced that Mr Gibson's swearing in would not go ahead and there would be a police investigation into allegations that he assaulted the former minister Sandra Nori in 1991.

Since Mr Iemma took over from Bob Carr, Mr Arbib has taken an unusually prominent role for a state secretary in giving policy advice, including advising to proceed with the desalination plant and on changes to the poker machine tax. He is expected to seek a seat in Federal Parliament at the coming election, possibly as a senator. This may have motivated his lobbying for Mr Gibson, who is a prodigious fund-raiser and is strongly supported by the National Union of Workers.

The turmoil from the Gibson affair has included the ousting of one of Mr Iemma's senior policy advisers, Mark Aarons, who is leaving his job after falling out with the Premier's chief of staff, Mike Kaiser. Mr Aarons, an author and journalist, was told by an upper house MP, Helen Westwood, that Mr Gibson had allegedly assaulted Ms Nori. He alerted Mr Kaiser by email and later faxed Mr Iemma.

Mr Kaiser is understood to have been furious at the political embarassment of having to dump Mr Gibson and believed he had not been fully briefed. Mr Aarons is expected to leave the office within a fortnight.

The dispute between the Premier and Mr Arbib follows previous rifts over efforts by Mr Arbib to oust a sitting MP, Marie Andrews - whom Mr Iemma supported - and his leaking of internal polling during the election campaign.