The Dead Roo

In a new Dead Roo feature, editors Rebecca Leighton and Kieran Bennett will be preparing a weekly profile of a less well known public figure who has featured in the mainstream news over the preceding week.

Our first target is Paul Gibson, the New South Wales state MP who was dumped from the ministry before even being sworn in earlier this week after allegations of domestic violence were levelled against him. For a perennial backbencher, he has quite the interesting past.

Paul Gibson grew up in a housing commission estate in the regional town of Young. He played first grade rugby league with Manly, Parramatta and Penrith, and otherwise worked as a supplier to hotels before entering politics. He won Labor preselection for the safe seat of Londonderry in 1988 after a shock victory over popular local councillor (and later popular MP and minister) Faye Lo’ Po, in a result put down at the time to sexism, with the Sydney Morning Herald citing members who “did not want to be represented by a woman”. Not long after, he began his affair with fellow political newcomer Sandra Nori - who he is now accused of having assaulted. He was initially unaligned, but later joined the right-wing faction.

Though it might be hard to believe now, he actually started his career as a hard-working MP. He was instrumental in a community campaign to stop the then-Liberal government from building the biggest rubbish dump in the southern hemisphere in his electorate, and annoyed then-Environment Minister Tim Moore so much that Moore threatened to try to have him arrested. He was quite the popular member, and Antony Green described him at the time as “one of the ALP’s most effective backbenchers”. That said, he had an odd friendship with then-Premier Nick Greiner, who he used to regularly play squash with, despite being on opposite sides of politics. He looked set to lose his seat in a redistribution before the 1991 election, and tried and failed to roll Lo’ Po as the preselected candidate for the marginal Liberal seat of Penrith, but was saved by a last-minute change of heart by the Redistribution Commission which kept Londonderry around. It was reported at the time that Greiner had offered to find him a government job if he was unable to find a new seat in the wake of the redistribution.

Alas, that was where things started to go a bit awry for Gibson. He was overlooked for the ministry after the election, in what was probably his only real chance in light of the Nori allegations. In September, he lodged sensational complaints about police corruption with ICAC. These centred on claims that underworld figure Louis Bayreh had been framed by corrupt police and forced to bribe his way out, but extended to a number of other murders and unsolved crimes. In the wake of this, he was reportedly beaten up by mysterious thugs, and rejected police protection, saying he couldn’t trust that those sent to protect him wouldn’t kill him. Unfortunately, the allegations went nowhere (as they later turned out to be utterly false), and Gibson largely disappeared from the limelight.

After the end of 1991, Gibson kept a relatively low profile. He split with Sandra Nori in 1993, and almost immediately began having an affair with Katherine Koperberg, wife of future Labor minister Phil Koperberg. He repeatedly turned up in battles over moral issues, fighting the legalisation of euthanasia and the granting of government funds to Sydney’s bid to host the Gay Games. Gibson’s homophobia reared its head again years later during the successful campaign to equalise ages of consent for gay and straight couples, on which he was rather bizarrely quoted as saying “This bill is saying if you’re a pedophile, you’ve won the lottery.” That said, he was a continuing ongoing opponent of gun control - albeit another political stance he shared with Fred Nile. He also participated in a round of good old Labor branchstacking warfare against factional rival Richard Amery, forcing the factional warlords to try and force them to declare a truce lest it damage the party’s election chances. He did, however, achieve some credibility for his maverick stint as head of the parliament’s road safety (StaySafe) committee, campaigning incessantly for reduced speed limits. He was later to lose much of this credibility after being caught speeding, contesting the fine, and winding up with a conviction.

Things got yet worse for Gibson when, in 1997, Bayeh - the underworld figure he had gone out on a limb for in 1991 - made allegations that he had bribed Gibson into defending him with gifts and a holiday to Fiji. Gibson found himself before ICAC. It was made clear that Gibson and Bayeh had a close social relationship, and the continuing revelations about their ties turned up by ICAC over the following year permanently damaged his reputation. The proceedings briefly descended into farce when Gibson successfully sought to have ICAC head Barry O’Keefe taken off the case for perceived bias, then sued him for defamation, resulting in an out of court settlement. During this period, and despite his wealthy parliamentary pension, he was represented by legal aid at considerable cost to the taxpayer. After months of inquiries, Gibson was ultimately cleared, as much of the allegations came down to Bayeh’s word against Gibson’s. However, it was a pyrrhic victory, as the acting commissioner (in O’Keefe’s absence) reported “…I find myself utterly unable to have any confidence whatsoever in the truth or reliability of anything said by Gibson when it conflicts with the evidence of any other witness, other than Bayeh.” The stench from the inquiry has hung over his head ever since.

Gibson was left in trouble again after the redistribution for the 1999 election, which abolished his electorate of Londonderry. Despite the cloud hanging over his head, he came out on top in the massive episode of musical chairs that followed, taking the safe Labor seat of Blacktown (though Gibson himself lived in the safe Liberal seat of Baulkham Hills in northern Sydney), and leaving popular Police Minister Paul Whelan to contest the Liberal-held seat of Strathfield. He again disappeared from the public eye thereafter until regaining his chairmanship of the StaySafe Committee in 2003. This again saw him emerging as a campaigner on road safety, although he remained prone to bizarre behaviour, such as comparing the CEO of Woolworths to Hitler during a session of a parliamentary inquiry that year.

Gibson has long been one of the ALP’s best fundraisers in New South Wales, due in large part to his strong ties to the hotel industry. He has held a lucrative campaign fundraiser attended solely by the hotel industry annually since the 1990s, which nets him tens of thousands of dollars both for his personal campaign fund and for the party more broadly. It was revealed earlier this year that Gibson had become Labor’s top fundraiser - raising $174,301, nearly double that of the second-highest, the already-dubious Joe Tripodi. During this time, the long-time president of the Australian Hotels Association, John Thorpe, said of Gibson “It is great to have a long-standing friend in this esteemed establishment, Parliament House”. The fact that this relationship and these fundraising efforts continued all throughout his stints as head of the StaySafe Committee - despite the obvious conflict-of-interest considering its responsibility for drink-driving laws and policy - raises interesting concerns about Gibson’s already questionable integrity.

This brings us to the last few months. In November, he was accused of unleashing a smear campaign against Phil Koperberg, ex-husband of his former lover and then-Labor star candidate, in which a 20-year-old AVO was leaked to the press. This sparked a very angry response from Koperberg, and ensured their continuing animosity in the leadup to the election. The election saw that they were both in parliament together, but then came Iemma’s strange decision to promote him to the ministry - to Nori’s old portfolio, no less, in spite of what had been seen as an unofficial veto in light of the ongoing allegations about Gibson and domestic violence. This reportedly sparked threats from new promotee Koperberg to resign, and then caused all hell to break loose when new left-wing Labor MLC Helen Westwood went on record and made a formal complaint, alleging that she had witnessed one such incident of domestic violence against Nori in 1991. Which brings us to yesterday’s glorious news that Gibson will not, after all, be returning to the ministry. Good riddance.

This issue written by Bec Leighton with research by Bec and Kieran.

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