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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

There comes a time when politicians say enough is enough, and they leave parliament.

Often, they depart the stage without anyone really noticing. Other times, it’s worth pausing and marking their storied parliamentary careers.

That’s the case for Stuart Robert, whose called time on politics after 16 years, during which time he’s been the recipient of a bag of Rolexes, one of the Ministers responsible for Robodebt, and Scott Morrison’s brother Stewie.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton, on the incredible parliamentary life of Stuart Robert and why one last scandal hangs over his departure.

It’s Monday, May 15.

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RUBY:

So Rick, Stuart Robert, former coalition minister, is now resigning from parliament, as well, after 16 years. And as he resigned, he admitted that his time in power hadn't been the smoothest ride. So how would you characterise Stuart Robert and his career as a politician? What do you think of when you think of him?

RICK:

Yeah. Good question. Stuart Robert is a fascinating cat. He's a Liberal MP. He was elected to the Gold Coast seat of Fadden in 2007, confidante of Scott Morrison, and he's been a minister and assistant minister and held some pretty powerful jobs since 2007, especially when, obviously, the coalition was in government. But he's really known for a series of scandals, including a dinner involving a $250,000 gift bag of genuine Rolex watches from a Chinese billionaire. There's the inexplicable $2,000 a month taxpayer funded home internet bill. There’s Robodebt, which harmed people. There’s synergy 360, which we'll learn about. A speech he gave in 2012, which was co-written by a property developer lobbyist. The list goes on. We actually don't have time to go through all of them, because genuinely it would take too long. Now, according to some Liberals, Robert's business interests, which had to be declared whenever he was presenting to Cabinet, were more complicated than Malcolm Turnbull's and unnecessarily so. These, kind of, labyrinthine series of trusts and holding companies and all the rest of it. But that is what he had, and he fully embodied this idea of the Gold Coast MP, I think. You know, he's an interesting man. He's a former army, I think in intelligence, and had an IT business. He’s fully Gold Coast vibes. Gold Coast Energy.

RUBY:

What’s Gold Coast Energy, Rick?

RICK:

Gold Coast Energy is really about this kind of this chutzpah, I guess. It's all about selling a vision and then you do deals. And also just endlessly confident. And now, of course, after all, all those years of public service, Stuart Robert is leaving Parliament. He said politics is tough. People throw the kitchen sink. If you read between the lines, it almost seems like he was gloating by saying look, Labor tried to get me and they didn't. I'm still here and I'm going on my own terms.

RUBY:

All right. So if we were to trace back where the scandals start for Stuart Robert, a good place seems to be this 2012 speech that he made that was partly written by a lobbyist. So tell me more about what he said in this speech, and who actually came up with the words and why.

RICK:

So in 2012, some people might have forgotten, but there was an Australian man who was in jail, imprisoned or held in detention over in Dubai, who was involved in a commercial partnership with Sunland, which is a developer on the Gold Coast, which was chaired by the Abedian family.

Sunland were publicly, alleged, to have been responsible for ditching this guy over there, and there this huge diplomatic mission to try and get him out and to not, you know, have him face a life imprisonment. Stuart Robert gets up in Parliament and delivers a speech defending the developer

Archival tape – Reporter 1:

“Stuart Robert in Parliament in 2012, defending Gold Coast property developers involved in a legal battle. Large parts of the speech, reportedly, were written by a lobbyist for the company.”

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“Is currently being appealed by Sunland on the basis that Justice Croft failed to consider.”

RICK:

Now, after that speech, the lobbyist who co-wrote it, Simone Holzapfel…

Archival tape – Reporter 2:

“…later donated almost $140,000 to Queensland's Liberal National Party and the Stuart Robert Fundraising Foundation.”

RICK:

Robert’s fundraising, The Fadden Forum, is basically owned by the LNP. Now Holzapfel made these donations while her company, her lobbying firm, was collapsing and at the time owed almost half a million dollars to creditors, including $355,000 to the Australian Taxation Office. And that raises some questions. And that's just the start, I guess, of the Stuart Robert story, because when it comes to donations and gifts, there’s more than a few times things that have been given to Stuart Robert have been ventilated, not just in the press, but more widely, I guess.

RUBY:

Well, let's touch a bit more on that. The donations and gifts that Stuart Robert has been given over the years. You mentioned Rolex watches earlier. Who gave him those?

RICK:

The Rolex watches story, forgive me, it's kind of funny. Robert had organised this dinner with the instant noodle billionaire. Yes, you heard that right, instant noodle billionaire, Li Ruipeng, at Parliament House. Now, also at the dinner, at the time, was the opposition industry spokesman, Ian McFarlane. They had this big bang up dinner and it's a knees up.

Archival tape – Reporter 3:

“The ABC has been told that Mr. Robert has routinely used his ministerial office for fundraising events. His response to questions about that is that he uses his office for parliamentary business.”

RICK:

At the end of the dinner, the noodle billionaire gave the two men a plastic bag.

Archival tape – Reporter 4:

“News Limited published this photo of a 2013 meeting in his office with a Chinese billionaire, who showed his gratitude by distributing a quarter of $1,000,000 worth of Rolex watches, which had to be returned.”

RICK:

Now, after the fact, McFarlane and a few others said that they thought that their watches were fake.

Archival tape – Penny Wong:

“How many Rolexes has a minister received, to your knowledge?”

Archival tape – Minister 1:

“I have no idea.”

RICK:

And so that was the moment when the Liberal factional head honcho, Tony Nutt, told everyone, you've got to get the watches back. That was a huge kerfuffle, But a couple of years after that, Robert then went to Beijing on a trip and that would ultimately lead to his sacking.

RUBY:

Okay, so Stuart Robert was sacked at one point after a trip to Beijing. So tell me about that trip and what happened, what he was accused of doing that had those kind of repercussions.

RICK:

Yeah. So it's August 2014. Stuart Robert is in government. He's the assistant defence minister. He flies to Beijing.

Archival tape – Reporter 5:

“The torture continues for Stuart Robert.”

Archival tape – Minister 2:

“My question is to the Minister for Human Services.”

Archival tape – Reporter 6:

“As Labor turns the screws on the Minister for a trip he took to China in 2014. In the company of Paul Marks, a businessman whose given a lot to the Coalition.”

RICK:

And at that point a close personal friend of Stuart Robert's Paul Marks. So it’s a signing ceremony between Nimrod Resources, which is a company owned by Paul Marks, and Chinese Communist Party officials, who ran the state owned China controlled Minmetals.

Archival tape – Reporter 7:

“The Minister took personal leave to make the trip, which means he shouldn't have conveyed the impression he was acting for the government.”

RICK:

The Chinese delegates themselves were completely under the impression that it was official business. That's what DFAT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, also told a Senate hearing about this trip. And the final deal between the two companies was later signed in front of the Chinese President Xi Jinping and then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Archival tape – Reporter 8:

“Is the report already under way, Mr. Parkinson?”

Archival tape – Martin Parkinson:

“The Prime Minister asked the head of his department to investigate the trip.”

RICK:

Parkinson finds, in the course of that investigation, that the member for Fadden, Stuart Robert, owned shares in a holding company called McCallum Holdings, which in turn had a stake in Nimrod Resources. That is, a financial stake in Nimrod Resources.

Archival tape – Reporter 9:

“And though the questions mount, including whether he took a private jet, every response is the same.”

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“I refer the member to my previous answer.”

Archival tape – Reporter 10:

“There’s now a growing focus on the minister's muscular networking and fundraising.”

RICK:

Now he was sacked. That was enough. It gave the appearance, at the very least, of a conflict of interest which was a breach of the ministerial code of conduct. Turnbull gets rid of him. And then Scott Morrison gets rid of Turnbull, and Scott Morrison and Stuart Robert are very close friends.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“He paid his own way.“

Archival tape – Interviewer 1:

“So what's the drama?”

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“And they're all getting upset. I mean, what happened was, he was there at his own expenses, he paid his own way.”

RICK:

And, Stuart Robert finds his way back in cabinet, I think.

Archival tape – Interviewer 2:

“How does this bloke get more responsibility in your reshuffle?”

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Because he’s done an outstanding job in the one that he’s been doing.”

RICK:

And then the scandals kept coming.

Even now as Stuart Robert, kind of, exits the political stage, there is, you will not be surprised to hear this, another scandal hanging over him.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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RUBY:

So, Rick, former Coalition minister, Stuart Robert, is preparing to leave parliament as we speak, after 16 years. And there have been some pretty serious ups and downs in those years, including the time that he was given a plastic bag full of Rolexes. But I suppose more seriously, when he temporarily lost his job as a minister over this deal involving the Chinese government and a company that it turned out that he had a stake in. You said there's something else, though, as he exits the stage, another scandal hanging over him. So tell me more about it.

RICK:

It's still quite funny to be like, one of the scandals is like, oh, you were given a bag full of Rolexes. It's like, oh, no, not the classic bag full of Rolexes trick. It's like stepping on a rake, political version. But you're right. And remember, we were talking before about liberal people saying, you know, he's got these insanely complicated business trusts. Well, that's kind of where we come back to with the most recent scandal.

Archival tape – Reporter 10:

“Leaked files show Federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert attended private consulting meetings to discuss major government projects after becoming a minister. The Age newspaper reports…”

RICK:

Now, this involves Stuart Robert's links to an IT services company, the advisory firm, a consulting firm, called Synergy 360.

Archival tape – Reporter 11:

“The files indicate the company offered political access to clients in the form of a number of ministers highly involved in government tenders.”

RICK:

Now, they're a private contractor who themselves take on various government contracts, but also advise other companies who are bidding for government contracts, and they tell them how they can try and win those contracts, help them get through the door, etcetera.

Archival tape – Reporter 12:

“The company won a multimillion dollar open tender for Centrelink in 2019 when Stuart Robert was NDIS and Government Services Minister.”

RICK:

He denies ever giving them any special access. He said he gave them advice in the same way that he would give any constituent advice. So the links between Synergy, the Liberal Party and Robert led to a review. The review looked at 95 contracts connected to Synergy 060, and they flagged 19 as being particularly low quality or in breach, technical or otherwise, of procurement rules. Now it gets a little bit in the weeds, but 19, collectively, were worth $334 million. Now, all of that is interesting as a procurement contracting story, but here's where it gets really interesting.

So Synergy 360 was set up by David Milo, under the name Milo Consulting, but it trades as Synergy 360. Then for some reason they’ve gifted a 20% stake to a guy called John Margerison. Now, John Margerison is a former business partner of Stuart Robert, since he was also the former chair of Robert's Fadden Forum, you know that fundraising vehicle that the LNP essentially controlled. So he and Robert know each other really well. Now, at a parliamentary hearing last month, Margerison turns up, he doesn't have to turn up, but he decides he wants to come, he wants to give evidence voluntarily. And now at this hearing it's confirmed that Margerison and Robert were essentially co-beneficiaries of a trust called the Australian Property Trust. The APT was the sole beneficiary of John Margerison's stake in Synergy 360. So remember, Margerison gets 20% of Synergy 360. He sends an email in 2017 to his accountant, who’s a Gold Coast based accountant called Sean Beasley and says, just send everything through, all the profits, to the Australian Property Trust. Stuart Robert had declared a financial interest in that trust on his parliamentary register in 2017, but was not necessarily publicly known at that time that he stood to gain, at least on the documents, a financial stake in Synergy 360, this firm that he had been giving advice to.

RUBY:

Right, so Stuart Robert was involved in giving this company, Synergy 360, advice about how it could get government contracts. And the company is then found to have contracts with the government that aren’t very good, and maybe in some cases it shouldn’t have actually won those contracts in the first place. So, it seems like a lot of this really comes down to the appearance of a conflict of interest, that it really isn’t the best look for a minister to be very close with a private company that wins business and makes money from the government.

RICK:

That's exactly what it is. And all of this stuff remains to be, kind of, gone over, but it is enough to warrant further scrutiny. No doubt.

It gives this flavour of what his entire parliamentary career has been like. There's always been something that's been worth looking into. And then, it kind of just fizzles out and doesn't really go anywhere.

And just for the record, you know, Stuart Robert has answered allegations, all of these allegations, over time. And, you know, throughout his career he's called some allegations scurrilous, nonsense, said that they're not true, they're incorrect, etc., etc.. He denies wrongdoing in relation to any and all of these issues. But there's a few other things afoot in the background now that certainly have raised some people's eyebrows about whether the timing Stuart Robert's resignation is purely his own or whether he's taken some other things into consideration.

RUBY:

Yeah, the timing is interesting because it was only about two months ago that he appeared before the Robodebt Royal Commission as well. And during those hearings, he said that he took responsibility for the implementation of Robodebt at one point. And he also said that he had defended it, at the time, in which he also knew that it could be unlawful. So, I mean, to what extent do you think that has played into his resignation and will form part of his legacy?

RICK:

Interesting question, because honestly, I think he genuinely believes that he was the guy that ended Robodebt. That is not the evidence, by the way, of the secretary of his then department, Rene Leon, and the chief counsel for that department at the time, who both said that Stuart Robert basically dragged his feet. Stuart Robert takes the stand at the Robodebt royal commission and he not only says that he stopped it, he says that he didn't even know that there was previous legal advice in terms of a federal court matter, and that if he had known back when they knew, he would have done exactly what he says he did, which was he took the solicitor general's advice, according to him, he marched into Prime Minister Scott Morrison's office, slammed it down and said this needs to stop. But he also admitted on the stand, under oath, to the royal commissioner, and everyone else watching, that he lied.

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“They were the accepted figures by government to use. And it's a dutiful cabinet minister, ma'am. That's what we do.”

RICK:

Literally, he said, Ma'am.

This is far and away the biggest scandal of his career because this involved real people. I mean, you could obviously argue that procurement processes and contracting in government is really important and it is. But Robodebt, people died. People killed themselves. People were suffering. Their lives were completely changed. People who lost homes or jobs or opportunity, because of this system. And Stuart Robert wanted to continue it according to the evidence of his most senior officials. So, I mean, should this be the scandal that hangs over his head forever? Yes. Do I think he personally worries much about it? No, I don't.

RUBY:

Rick, thank you so much for your time.

RICK:

Thanks Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Thousands of protestors gathered in Hobart over the weekend to protest the new stadium that will cost over 700 million dollars, including funding from the federal government, while the state faces a housing and homelessness crisis.

Speaking a day after the Tasmanian Liberal party was thrown into minority government, Senator Jacqui Lambie addressed the crowd, saying quote, "Tasmanians have had a bloody gutful over your stadium and you can stick it up your bum."

And,

A doomsday cult in Kenya appears to have led to one of the worst tragedies in the country’s history, with over 200 dead and another 600 missing.

The ‘Good News International Church’ taught members to starve themselves in order to meet Jesus.

The leader, Pastor Paul Mackenzie, was arrested last month and charged with terrorism offenses.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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