ACCORDING to Eddie Obeid, we've got him terribly wrong. Yes, he was a Labor powerbroker in 2008 but with no political sway over mineral resources minister Ian Macdonald, accused of conspiring to convey tens of millions of dollars' worth of windfall to the Obeid family.
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The way Obeid explained it in his first day of evidence at the ICAC on Monday, Macdonald was in the Left faction and therefore out of his sphere of influence as a leader of the dominant subfaction of the Right, the Terrigals.
''I had power in the party on my side of politics, the right wing,'' Obeid explained. ''He belongs to a different faction and a different caucus.''
In fact, while notionally a member of the Left, Macdonald had been a pariah within it since the early 1990s, following his part in a failed push to dump then opposition leader Bob Carr in favour of Peter Anderson.
Macdonald was one of a group who felt Carr too ''bookish'' to be leader. His role saw his stocks dive with the leader of the parliamentary Left faction, Andrew Refshauge.
It was John Della Bosca, a leading light within the Terrigals, who threw Macdonald the lifeline that rehabilitated his career, convincing Carr to make him a parliamentary secretary after Labor's 1999 election win.
Della Bosca's argument to Carr was that Macdonald's skill at political subterfuge was better put to work for the government rather than against it.
From that point on, most say, Macdonald was regarded as a creature of the Terrigals, increasingly spending his time with Della Bosca, Obeid, Joe Tripodi, Michael Costa and Eric Roozendaal and growing ever more distant from the Left.
When Carr retired in 2005 Della Bosca's influence waned under new premier Morris Iemma. Macdonald became closer to Obeid, an Iemma confidant at the time.
Iemma's successor, Nathan Rees, sacked Macdonald from cabinet, but Obeid told Monday's hearing he had nothing to do with Macdonald's reinstatement to the ministry after Rees was rolled in favour of Kristina Keneally in 2009, the same year Macdonald was formally expelled from the Left.
''It was on Keneally's say-so,'' Obeid said. ''The Terrigals didn't have any influence on the reappointment of Macdonald.''
Keneally, of course, was installed as premier by the Right. When pressed, Obeid conceded: ''We thought [Macdonald] was a good minister … We had no objection to him.''
In private hearings, the commission heard, Obeid has insisted he helped out Macdonald when he was under stress. ''I suppose he leant on me to sort of be someone to talk to. To work things out.''
It's a relationship set to be explored in greater depth when Macdonald is called by the commission to give evidence later this week.
