Free The Killing Season Uncut by Sarah Ferguson Page A

Minister and the Treasurer whether they, or anyone in their offices, had tried to help a car dealer named John Grant.
    Earlier that day, before a Senate committee, a Treasury official who managed OzCar—a special-purpose fund set up during the financial crisis to help struggling car dealers—was answering questions from Liberal Senator Eric Abetz. The official, Godwin Grech, said he had received ‘representations’ about car dealerships from the Prime Minister and Treasurer’s offices. Pushed for detail, Grech confirmed the approaches from the PM’s office were about one dealership, and they came ‘mostly’ by email.
    Ken Henry had mentored Godwin Grech.

    This guy was so well known in the department. A quirky character. A fun person to have around, believe it or not.
    The car dealer Grech referred to, John Grant, was an acquaintance of Kevin Rudd’s who had once given Rudd a second-hand ute which he used in his electorate. The donation had been declared. When Turnbull first raised the issue in Question Time, Rudd was puzzled.

    I just scratched my head and turned around to Treasurer Swan and said, ‘What the hell’s all that about? I have no idea’.
    Andrew Charlton was sitting in the adviser’s box in the chamber.

    Suddenly I noticed that a number of the Coalition frontbenchers were staring at me quite intently, and then Malcolm Turnbull asked the Prime Minister whether he had corruptly acted to give a favour to his friend, John Grant. I sent down a piece of paper to the Prime Minister at the dispatch box that said, ‘I’ve checked with the office. No-one has provided any special favours to Mr Grant’. And the Prime Minister said that in Parliament.
    The ‘Utegate’ saga unfolded over the next two weeks. Press secretary Lachlan Harris watched Turnbull’s fevered pursuit of Rudd and Swan.

    I can remember watching Turnbull go after [Rudd and Swan]. Really, he obviously thought he smelt blood. There’s a great expression in rugby league, white line fever, and there was a man that had white line fever. He saw the tryline but he didn’t see the defending tacklers coming his way and he paid a very high price for that.
    Unknown to members of the government, Grech was a Liberal Party mole who’d convinced Turnbull and Abetz that he had evidence that Rudd’s office had sought special assistance for Grant. He claimed the proof was an email from Andrew Charlton.
    Grech put in a second appearance before the Senate committee. Urged on by Abetz, the best that he could offer was his recollection of a ‘short email’ from the Prime Minister’s office, alerting him to Grant’s case.
    As Grech gave his testimony, government staffers, including Charlton, were watching in their parliamentary offices.

    I think I was having some morning tea and he said ‘Andrew Charlton’ and I think I might have spat that morning tea on the ground. It was a shock.
    Turnbull called a press conference and said Grech’s evidence was ‘extraordinary’. He demanded Rudd and Swan justify their actions or resign.
    Ken Henry was in a tax conference when Grech was giving evidence. He saw it on the evening news.

    At the end of it I turned the television off and my wife said to me, ‘Do you trust Godwin?’ The next morning I called the head of Treasury’s corporate area and I said, ‘I want our IT security people to go through every email of Godwin’s and whatever else’ … By Sunday morning I felt I had to call the commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.
    The email from Andrew Charlton was quickly exposed as a fake; so too was Grech.
    When I referred to the Grech affair as a small thing in my interview with Ken Henry, he shot back a reply.

    KH: This was not a small thing. No. Learning that one of my staff had behaved inappropriately in providing information to the Leader of the Opposition, over an extended