The 2011 campaign donations for the recently retired NSW sports minister Graham Annesley are yet to be approved by his Liberal Party conference workers two years after his election, because of concerns about the activities of his campaign treasurer, an undischarged bankrupt and property developer.
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Matt Daniel, a controversial backroom figure, has become a key powerbroker in the party's southern Sydney stronghold of the Sutherland Shire, together with his close ally, the Sutherland Shire Council mayor, Kent Johns.
A Herald investigation reveals Mr Daniel has been soliciting political donations for recent state and federal election campaigns while playing a clandestine role in helping nominate which land-holders should benefit from draft rezonings issued by Mr Johns' office. The rezonings could confer enormous windfalls on some local developers.
The investigations has also confirmed that before the 2011 state election, Mr Daniel paid for tickets to official party fund-raisers on behalf of property developers who, since 2009, have been banned from donating to state or local political candidates.
But Mr Daniel may easily satisfy the official definition of a property developer, having pursued big projects in Sydney, including in partnership with the former federal Labor minister Gary Punch.
A string of well-respected party workers left Mr Annesley's 2011 campaign when they learnt Mr Daniel was to be involved, and Mr Annesley was warned not to allow him on the campaign.
So concerned were Mr Daniel's political colleagues by the donations he solicited from the business community in the Sutherland area that two years after Mr Annesley won the seat of Miranda, they are still refusing to approve the election returns. Despite this, the party has filed a statutory return to the NSW Election Funding Authority which vouches that the income and expenditure described in the documents are true and accurate.
Mark Neeham, the party's state director, said: ''All reports and accounts, including those from the 2011 election campaign, are fully audited and subject to ongoing review and audit by the Electoral Funding Authority.''
Mr Annesley, who left Parliament to become head of the Gold Coast Titans, said only: ''That situation [the uncertified financial statements] had absolutely nothing to do with my decision to leave Parliament.'' A Liberal Party source said: ''They [head office] want the problem fixed. The law is it has to be signed off and there are four or five of us saying we can't sign it because we don't know it's true. I'm not prepared to sign a false stat dec.''
Most of the problematic receipts were transactions associated with Mr Daniel, multiple party sources said. At one Annesley fund-raiser at Brighton-le-Sands on February 2, 2011, at which John Howard was the guest of honour, several developers were seen at a table for which Mr Daniel said he had paid. ''It was one of the reasons I declined to sign the electoral returns,'' another source said. A third said: ''At the Le Sands fund-raiser there was cash going everywhere.''
In 2011, Mr Daniel went bankrupt owing almost $6 million, including to at least one member of a Rotary club over a failed property development in Kiama. Despite this, he worked, until last May, as a senior executive in the Department of Planning and is now deputy general manager of the Liberal-controlled Liverpool Council. Mr Daniel said he disclosed his bankruptcy to Planning's director-general, Sam Haddad.
He and Mr Johns, formerly a Labor mayor of Rockdale City Council, have been heavily involved in fund-raising in the shire and now control key branches. Two weeks ago Mr Johns failed in a tilt for the federal seat of Werriwa, and was to be preselected this week to run in a byelection to replace Mr Annesley in NSW, but at the last minute stood down.
Scott Morrison, who won preselection for the federal seat of Cook in 2007, despite receiving only eight of 160 local votes, and only after several unsubstantiated allegations were made against the preferred candidate, Michael Towke - has sought out both men, as well as two other key local Liberals, to secure their continuing support. In 2010 Mr Morrison wrote a personal reference for Mr Johns when he made a tilt for Federal Parliament.
Multiple party sources have told the Herald that Mr Daniel helped solicit donations for Mr Johns' campaign while at the same time pressuring Liberal members of Sutherland council to vote particular ways on developments before it.
Mr Daniel said the only fundraiser in which he played a ''central role'' was a Mark Speakman event in 2011, and that ''when and if I do attend with people I ensure that I abide by the relevant laws regarding donations''.
The Herald has also established that Mr Daniel helped Mr Johns craft a new local environment plan, the key planning instrument used by councils, that has conferred lucrative new zonings on scores of local properties.
Mr Johns said he had spoken to Mr Daniel and others regarding development issues and the LEP. ''I would always ask if there was professional or financial connections to shire issues and he advised there weren't any,'' he said.
