Who is godwin grech

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Site Map. Media Video Audio Photos. Subscribe Podcasts Newsletters. Then the following day, an official in Wayne Swan's office asked Grech to follow up on the John Grant issue. He said he called Grant, who told him he knew 'Kevin and Wayne' well and that 'Wayne and Kevin want this fixed'. Grech then went back and forth with Swan's office as he sought to find alternative financing for John Grant.

John Grant wasn't only a friend of Rudd and Swan; he'd also provided Rudd with a ute for use in election campaigns. From the suspicious viewpoint of an opposition, it looked like Rudd and Swan were giving a mate special treatment. Grech proposed to us that the best way to get this matter out in the open was by his appearing before a Senate committee.

He requested a meeting with myself and Senator Eric Abetz, the leader of the opposition in the Senate. We held the meeting at Lucy's office in Sydney on 12 June; it was at that meeting that Grech showed us the email from Andrew Charlton to himself. Grech briefed the journalist Steve Lewis about the email and gave evidence about it before a Senate committee on Friday 19 June.

Rudd had previously denied any approach from his office had been made. Thinking I might be on the verge of at least shaking Rudd's hitherto unassailable lead, I called on him to resign unless he could demonstrate he hadn't misled the parliament.

Rudd, meanwhile, checked his records, confirmed no such email had been sent from his office, and started saying the email must be a fake. On the Monday, the AFP raided Grech's home and established that the email was a fake created by Grech on his own computer. Enquiries followed, and by 4 August, Grech admitted publicly that he'd faked the email and that he'd shown it to me and Abetz.

One of the advantages of almost all our communication being by email was that it was obvious that we'd been thoroughly misled by Grech, who'd drawn us into his own political conspiracy.

I suffered the largest single drop in approval in any Newspoll. The debacle smashed my public standing and undermined immensely my authority as leader of the Liberal Party. Costello phoned and told me bluntly I should resign. I asked him if he wanted the job; he said he didn't.

But if the public impact of what became known as 'Utegate' was devastating, its private impact was much worse. I was mortified and deeply ashamed that I'd made a false accusation against the prime minister, that I'd been associated, however innocently, with a forged email and that I'd been so stupid as to have anything to do with Grech.

As soon as it was clear what had happened, I wanted to walk into the House and apologise to Rudd. The false allegations sparked several investigations and led to the demise of Malcolm Turnbull as Coalition leader.

Mr Grech spent more than a month in the psychiatric ward of a Canberra hospital for depression as the OzCar affair played out. He sold his Calwell home in and moved in with his parents in Melbourne.

He has since disappeared from public view, though he wrote an opinion column in supporting the Coalition. Mr Grech's lawyers lodged three cases against the government's workplace insurer last year. The matters went before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal but were settled out of court in June. The deal remains secret, although the tribunal will hold a hearing this week to consider a Fairfax Media request to access the case's documents.