Former NSW Labor trio to face corruption trial next year

A trio of ex-NSW Labor ministers, including jailed former powerbroker Eddie Obeid, will stand trial next year over allegations they worked to secure a public-private partnership that could have netted a financial windfall for the Obeid family.

Obeid, Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly formally entered pleas of not guilty in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Friday to charges of wilful misconduct in public office.

Obeid was jailed in October 2021 for a maximum of seven years after he was found guilty of misconduct in public office over separate dealings relating to a lucrative coal exploration licence granted over his family’s farm in the Bylong Valley.

The octogenarian, dressed in prison greens, appeared in court on Friday via audiovisual link from Long Bay prison to enter his plea. Obeid is first eligible for parole on August 20 next year.

His trial with Tripodi and Kelly is slated to start on May 12, 2025, with an estimate of nine weeks.

Kelly, then infrastructure minister, is accused between December 2009 and September 2010 of signing and authorising cabinet minute that “contained facts which [he] … knew to be untrue or had made no appropriate inquiries to confirm the accuracy of”, in order to support a proposal for the NSW government to enter into a public-private partnership with Australian Water Holdings. The water infrastructure company had links to the Obeid family.

Obeid is accused of “attempting to influence [former Labor ministers and premiers] Michael Costa, Nathan Rees, Morris Iemma, Phillip Costa and Kristina Keneally to promote the interests of Australian Water Holdings … without cause or justification” between July 2007 and August 2010.

Tripodi, who cut a glum figure outside court, is accused of preparing and providing a draft cabinet minute to Kelly and his then-chief of staff between December 2009 and May 2010 which supported the public-private partnership “without reasonable cause or justification”.