Australian state premier quits over wine gift ‘memory fail’

(SCMP) - A leading Australian politician resigned on Wednesday after admitting to a “massive memory fail” when he told a corruption inquiry he never received a bottle of wine worth around A$3,000 (HK$21,822).

Barry O’Farrell, who leads Australia’s populous New South Wales state, told the country’s Independent Commission Against Corruption on Tuesday that he was never given the 1959 bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage.

But when advised that a thank you note he had signed would be presented at the inquiry on Wednesday, O’Farrell quit.

“I’ve accepted that I have had a massive memory fail,” he told reporters in Sydney.

“I still can’t explain either the arrival of a gift that I have no recollection of, or its absence, which I certainly still can’t explain.”

The Commission has heard that Nick Di Girolamo, then chief executive of a water company accused of expenses fraud, sent the rare wine to O’Farrell shortly after he became premier in 2011.

Di Girolamo said the gift – a 1959 vintage to mark the year of O’Farrell’s birth – had been couriered to the Liberal Party premier’s Sydney home to offer “sincere congratulations” on his election victory.