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Now That’s a Dodgy Curry Lunch

The ex-Premier, the PM and the ‘businessmen’ – just another day for Labor.

Still more palatable than a Labor government. The Good Oil. Photoshop by Lushington Brady.

He may have retired from politics, but ‘Dictator Dan’ Andrews just can’t keep himself out of the news. If he’s not being sued by the teenage cyclist who so viciously threw himself into the former premier’s car a decade ago, he’s being caught in flagrante delicto with the PM and a dodgy businessman.

Put away the mind-bleach, there’s no sexual shenanigans alleged: they were at Toorak, not Davos. Thank God, really.

No, rather, it appears to be the usual Labor thing: scarfing up money from shonky foreigners. Remember, this is the same party that accepted literal shopping bags full of cash from ‘Chinese businessmen’.

Anthony Albanese was the star ­attraction at a private dinner in a Toorak mansion at which the Labor Prime Minister sat next to a wealthy foreign student kingpin whose international college has been deregistered after federal investigators uncovered “significant noncompliance”.

Rumour has it that representatives of the human trafficking industry declined an invitation. ‘Even we have standards,’ they’re alleged to have said.

The Australian can reveal multi-millionaire international college operator Rupinder Brar was one of about a dozen Indian-Australian business figures who dined with Mr Albanese at the VIP event on November 12 last year.

The Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, David Epstein, and former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews also attended the intimate event, which one of the guests described as “four hours of exquisite cuisine and hospitality”.

No doubt their palms were well and greased by the time coffee and liqueurs rolled around.

In the midst of a crackdown on dodgy international colleges that has led to the federal watchdog launching almost 200 investigations, Mr Albanese found himself sitting alongside Mr Brar who has been engaged in a marathon legal bid to overturn the deregistration of his firm, Barkly International College.

Asked directly by the Australian on Wednesday if the event was a Labor Party fundraiser, the Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment but confirmed Mr Albanese did attend a function at a private residence with Mr Andrews and a staffer. The office also declined to comment on what Mr Albanese and Mr Brar discussed over dinner […]

The Australian also asked the PMO why Mr Andrews and Mr Epstein attended the Indian-inspired feast, which was washed down with red wine.

The PMO declined to comment. Mr Andrews did not respond to questions from the Australian.

Video from the event reveals ‘raised Indian community concerns over the federal government’s visa processes with the prime minister’.

I wonder if they discussed stuff like this?

Criminal syndicates are pouring fake students into Australia to work in their illegal operations – including the sex industry – by exploiting the nation’s weak education visa and migration systems.

A scathing review by former Victorian police chief Christine Nixon has found migration linked to vocational education should be immediately reviewed and was so widely misused that it could warrant an overhaul of the working-visa system.

The issue was back in the spotlight this week at a parliamentary inquiry into the international student sector, where the chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, Phil Honeywood, alleged Australia’s international education system had become a “Ponzi scheme” in which onshore and overseas agents were paid up to 50 per cent commission by independent institutions to funnel south Asian students into courses with poor credentials that didn’t suit their talents or skills.

Speaking of which…

Mr Brar, who has made a fortune out of bringing Indian students to Melbourne and in the residential and commercial construction industry, sat next to Mr Albanese at the lunch and social media photos of the event reveal at one stage he was showing the PM something on his mobile phone. Mr Andrews sat immediately to the right of the PM.

Not so much as a rose between thorns as a row of pricks, then.

Oh, and there’s something in all this for you Kiwis, too.

[Businessman Sahil Nijhawan] then says: “There’s a big push right now in India where they are going ‘OK, well let’s go to New Zealand because Australia is taking 60 days.’”

Aw, don’t you feel just special, New Zealand?


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