The arrest and charging of colourful financier Ian Lazar marks another win for Senator John Williams in a campaign for change that has seen his life threatened.
Lazar on Friday faced court over allegations he defrauded an elderly woman of her home on the NSW mid-north coast. He was refused bail at Sydney's Central Local Court after a magistrate expressed concerns that the 43-year-old posed an unacceptable risk to Crown witnesses.
Lazar, a North Sydney mortgage trader, is one of Williams' most celebrated targets.
In a scorching speech to the Senate in 2011, Senator Williams listed the cases of alleged victims of Lazar as further proof of the need for a royal commission into white-collar crime.
"I do not give a rodent's backside what you think and I will say what I want in this place when it comes to highlighting white-collar crime and the destruction of people's lives," he said at the time.
He then took his folio of evidence straight to the federal police.
His push for a royal commission continues and was given fresh impetus this week when a Senate committee resolved to take the unprecedented step of calling Commonwealth Bank of Australia chairman David Turner to account for his company's financial planning scandal.
The 59-year-old sheep farmer turned federal senator's forceful pursuit of characters such as Lazar has created enemies.
Farfax Media can reveal that in November last year a senior detective from the NSW Police made contact with Senator Williams to tell him they believed a hit had been arranged on his life.
"We've just completed an 18-month inquiry into someone who we believe wanted to have you murdered," the detective told him. "We need to discuss your options."
Fairfax Media is not suggesting that Lazar made the death threat.
The threat didn't deter Senator Williams from continuing his fight against the crooks and the big end of town.
"If anything, it has made me more determined," he says.
That determination now has the supermarket duopoly of Coles and Woolworths in his sights.
"They've stitched up butchers, bakers, fruit and veg, pubs and pokies, petrol and, if they could, they'd move into pharmaceuticals, too," says Senator Williams.
"I'm here to stick up for Aussie battlers who have worked hard in their life to save money and buy a house or set up a business and have been done over by someone who has had their snout in the trough or done something crooked," he says.
"I have been through plenty of dry gullies in my life and so I know what it's like to need a voice."
It's apt, then, that Senator Williams hails from the small town of Rob Roy in northern NSW, named in honour of the 18th-century folk hero and outlaw, better known as the Scottish Robin Hood.
Like the original Rob Roy, Senator Williams has made his share of enemies along the way.
