MOTORSPORT: Light shed on Sydney 500 secrets
Details of what may have paved the way for the green light on the controversial Homebush street race have emergedA long-running inquiry in NSW's Independent Commission Against Corruption heard this week of payments of $55,000 - $30,000 of it in relation to the event at the Olympic precinct at Homebush and the other $25,000 in relation to Abu Dhabi, where V8 Supercars raced for three years (although that venue has recently dropped off this year's series calendar).
The figures were in notes of business consultant Greg Jones that came to light at the inquiry. Mr Jones was questioned at the inquiry about allegations the money was paid to Ian Macdonald, a minister in the former NSW Labor government.
Mr Jones admitted to the inquiry that he had been made a consultant on the project to run a V8 Supercar event at Homebush when Mr Macdonald was a NSW minister. When questioned about his hand-written financial records that included the figures mentioned above he could not explain where the $55,000 had gone.
Questions put to him suggested the money had gone to Mr Macdonald through an offshore bank account.
Tony Cochrane, executive chairman of V8 Supercars Australia until late last year, championed the concept of a V8 Supercar event at Homebush for years after the 2000 Olympics there. The idea kept running into hurdles in the NSW bureaucracy, but in mid-2008 things changed. Quite suddenly V8SA became very confident that its proposal was going to get the green light.
We noted here in July 2008 that "there appears to have been a shift in the corridors of NSW power, from bureaucrats who opposed the street race idea having the upper hand to cabinet ministers, including (then) premier Morris Iemma, now favouring it - and quite strongly".
Around the same time we noted that "something critical changed on this Homebush proposal a few weeks back - and we haven't quite identified precisely what it was".
"Certainly NSW's state development minister Ian Macdonald has become a vigorous supporter of the street race idea," we reported.
In "dumping" on the Eastern Creek permanent circuit in the city's west, calling it "a disaster", and stepping up his lobbying for the Homebush street race, saying V8SA would largely fund it beyond a substantial government contribution to the establishment of it and then a modest annual input, Cochrane said: "We are putting our money where our mouth is."
Later in 2008 the proposal got the NSW government's okay, with Macdonald given responsibility for it. In November that year we noted here that "we are getting a real sniff of scandal in our nostrils about it (the Homebush project) all".
"These things often take a while to completely shake loose," we wrote. "...let's just hope not too much more shifty business goes on regarding Homebush."
The Sydney 500 has been staged four times since 2009, each time on the first weekend of December as the championship finale and with rock concerts at night, but without ever generating the global - or even national - exposure that was proclaimed it would produce.
There are doubts about it continuing beyond this year, with the O'Farrell conservative government known to have much less enthusiasm for it than the former Labor regime.
The full details of how the event came to be have not shaken loose, and may never, but what emerged in the ICAC inquiry this week has given a clue.
What isn't clear is which bank account or pocket the $55,000 came from.
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