According to Mark Aarons,another political adviser,there were occasions when Macdonald would collect everyone’s contribution to the restaurant bill,before surreptitiously pocketing their money and then paying the bill on his corporate credit card.
His credit card rorting was finally exposed and an angry premier Neville Wran demanded that Macdonald and some of his mates repay the then $18,000 worth of taxpayers’ funds they’d spent on themselves.
Macdonald,furious,told a mate at the time,“I have grown up with nothing,and I am going to get everything I can.”
As a minister,Macdonald was caught using his corporate credit card to buy himself a $1299 television. He was finally forced out of parliament in 2010 over undeclared airline upgrades he’d received for doing favours during the equine flu crisis.
His untrammelled sense of entitlement also saw him do favours for others just because he could.
It was just before Christmas in 2008 when Macdonald,Labor’s then resources minister,bypassed parliament house instead choosing Rose Bay’s upmarket harbourside restaurant Catalina to conduct important government business.