Fly Away, Peter, Fly Away, Paul

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 21, 2000

ALAN RAMSEY

IN HER overnight statement issued through lawyers in London three days ago, Ingrid Odgers, 27 the sparkling young woman from Adelaide whose plunging neckline we now seem unable to escape in just about any newspaper in the country anyone cares to pick up said at one point: ``When I lived in the house with Paul Reith, he would always show off. At one stage he said he wanted to get his father's private jet to fly him and me back to Adelaide for my 21st [birthday]."

On Wednesday morning, in what was then his 19th press interview in eight days in defence of his son, this time with ABC Radio's Sally Loane, the following exchange took place with the besieged Peter Reith, minister of the Crown and totally loyal father:

Reith: I mean, [Paul] has certainly and people should know he has adamantly denied ever giving this person the [phone] card. It's also claimed this morning he said to her that Dad could arrange access to a private jet. Well, Sally, I have never owned a private jet.

Loane: Could he have just been big-noting himself?

Reith: Well, I don't know. But the claim is, Dad had a private jet. Well, you know, at that stage [in 1994], well, I might have just come back on to the [Coalition] frontbench, but I was a member of the Opposition. Not only did I personally never own a private jet obviously it's well outside my reach and as a member of the Opposition I would never have had access to any jet of any sort, government or otherwise."

Wrong, Peter Reith. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Ingrid Odgers boarded, for four months, in a Melbourne house owned by Reith senior and occupied by son Paul from April to August 1994. During this time Odgers says she paid $60 a week rent, plus bills, and ``I was not his [Paul's] girlfriend."

And, contrary to what he told Loane this week, four times during those four months ``Dad" did indeed have access to a ``private jet" the Commonwealth's now 10-year-old VIP fleet of five leased Falcon 900s, costing $3,000 an hour to operate, and which are to be replaced in 2002 by a $500 million, 12-year lease of three Challenger 604 jets and two ``corporate-configured" Boeing 737s.

We know of this access because, as the Gorton Government introduced way back in the late 1960s, every VIP flight and every person on every flight is logged. The details are released to Parliament every six months, nowadays in a modest little booklet entitled Schedule of Special Purpose Flights.

And these records show that, for the six years from July 1988 to the end of August 1994 the month Paul Reith's lovely lodger moved out Peter Reith not only had access to the VIP jet fleet but he was a passenger on 15 such flights during this period, four of them in his own right as deputy Liberal leader to John Hewson from March 1990 to April 1993.

Reith's use of VIP aircraft was hardly excessive.

In fact, the reality is that his recorded usage of all parliamentary privileges over the years in opposition or in government, as a senior frontbencher or a rejected deputy leader returned to the backbench, from cars to overseas trips to the notorious travel allowance is not that of somebody who milks the system. He is not a rorter, whatever you think of the phonecard fiasco.

But that is not the point.

What is the point is that, with his son's word under direct challenge and himself locked into defence of his son's credibility, Peter Reith, foolishly, bludgeoned the truth on his son's behalf, deliberately or not. He did have access to ``private jets" and he did make use of this access from time to time, certainly as far back as December 22, 1988, a time when his oldest son, Paul, would have been an adolescent 15 years old, an impressionable age.

And if Reith has forgotten, here are the details: December 22, 1988, Canberra to Melbourne, with a large group of MPs, aboard an RAAF 707 during the pilots' strike; November 3, 1989, Canberra to Melbourne; May 6, 1990, with six MPs, Melbourne to Canberra; June 1, 1990, with 12 Coalition MPs, Canberra to Melbourne; June 21, 1991, Canberra to Melbourne, with 13 MPs; November 15, 1991, with John Hewson only, Canberra to Melbourne and back to Canberra; November 13, 1992, Canberra to Melbourne, with Hewson and Andrew Peacock.

From February 10, 1993, to March 9, 1993, the frantic campaign period of the unlosable election that Hewson lost, Reith used VIP jets in his own name four times, each time the only passengers being himself and two or three staff. Those flights were all in the Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra loop.

Hewson lost the election but remained Opposition Leader against the challenge of John Howard, at least for another 14 months. Reith wasn't so fortunate. He was dumped as deputy, gaining only three votes in a Melbourne Cup field. Thus Reith's name does not appear again on the VIP flight manifests for more than a year.

And by the time it does, on May 14, 1994, on a flight from Melbourne to Canberra with seven other Coalition MPs, son Paul now has Ingrid Odgers as his lodger. Over the next four months, until Odgers moves out in August to briefly share an apartment with Dr Song Lim, Mr Y in the phone card saga, Reith shares three more VIP ``private jet" flights: on July 4, 1994, from Adelaide to Casino to Melbourne, with the Liberals' then new leader, Baby Downer; on August 6, 1994, on a flight from Melbourne to Townsville; and on August 9, with five other Coalition MPs, on a flight from Sydney to Nowra.

Ludicrously, given the devious role Labor senators Robert Ray and John Faulkner have played in maximising the Government's agony over his $50,000 phonecard bill, Reith obviously forgot who was on the plane with him that day in early August 1994. Who else Robert Ray, at the time Keating's Defence Minister.

Reith, with Downer replacing Hewson as leader, was back on the Coalition frontbench again, at the time as Opposition spokesman for defence. There was some sort of function to do with new patrol boats being built in Townsville and Ray gave Reith a return lift on his VIP flight from Melbourne. Thus all these years later, it wasn't too smart of Reith to go on radio and insist he would ``never have had access to any jet of any sort, government or otherwise".

It's not a bit of trivia, either.

The central issue of the phonecard fraud is credibility. Who to believe? Paul Reith, who told his father at least a year ago he never gave the card number or its PIN to anyone after his father, unlawfully, gave it to him in 1993 or 1994? Or Ingrid Odgers, who told police in London two months ago that Paul Reith had given her both numbers when she was his boarder and insisted she use them ``whenever I wanted"?

The only other name we have out in public is Mr Y, his name suppressed by the Government but identified by Odgers on Wednesday as Dr Song Lim, a radiologist. Regrettably, for the moment, Dr Song has done a bunk overseas and isn't due back in Melbourne until October 30. When Peter Reith flew to Perth on Thursday for a party function, one of his colleagues remarked darkly it was a pity ``he didn't keep going, too".

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the unfortunately named Damian Bugg, previously the DPP in Tasmania for 13 years, leaves the issue of whom to believe open, deciding for now to prosecute nobody. The Solicitor-General, the flashy David Bennett, with his passion for fast cars, ``considers" it ``more likely than not Paul Reith's version" of events would be ``preferred" by a court. Bennett does not change his mind when Odgers outs herself as Miss X and vigorously challenges father and son Reith's central claims of supporting each other. Yet Peter Reith from the outset has simply protected his son. It doesn't excuse his utter disregard for the rules of his publicly funded Telecard use, but his actions can be understood.

Clearly, he believed his son or wanted to believe him that somehow Odgers had gained access to the phonecard numbers by devious means. His son had told him last year he never gave them to her. He has gone on saying so, doggedly. The son, now a 27-year-old London merchant banker, told police the same story three months ago. Thus Reith senior has gone on insisting the card was ``stolen".

So when Odgers, to support her story of the young man with whom she was newly sharing a house showing off to her, says Paul Reith, as a 20-year-old, boasted he could get his ``father's private jet" to fly them to Adelaide, Reith instinctively ridicules her.

In doing so he goes too far and ignores the truth. Examine the reality and you can see how her story could stand up.

After all, how might a 20-year-old student, with a senior politician for a father who has demonstrated access to government ``private jets", impress a vivacious young woman who has just moved in as his boarder? You don't have to be male or a parent to arrive at one possible answer. You only have to remember what it was like to be 20.

As Labor's John Faulkner remarked yesterday: ``Family Christmas dinner at the Reiths could be interesting this year."