As a minister, as he was by late 2008, Mr Daley said he had an obligation to meet with MPs. This week on the campaign trail, the Opposition Leader has moved to distance himself from the old Labor days of Obeid and the Terrigal faction, named for Obeid's beachside holiday spot. Corrupt former MP Eddie Obeid. Credit:Daniel Munoz Mr Daley said: "I was not part of the Terrigals ... There was no such thing as the Terrigals in our area [the eastern suburbs]." But as Premier Gladys Berejiklian does her utmost to turn the opposition's troubled history into an election issue, Mr Daley is attempting to escape the ghosts of Labor past.

He has been forced this week to defend his record as a Randwick City councillor and his voting on a project said to have benefited Obeid connections 20 years ago after a series of articles in News Corp newspapers. The release of former mining minister Ian Macdonald from jail on Monday after he won an appeal against a corruption conviction was another reminder of a time Labor would rather forget. And Ms Berejiklian has resumed an old line of attack against Mr Daley. "I think he needs to tell the people of NSW why he thanked Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi in his first speech to parliament," Berejiklian said this week. Former Obeid ally Ian Macdonald was freed from jail on Monday. Credit:Peter Rae

"I don’t know why you thank someone if you never knew them before." The former premier and Maroubra MP Bob Carr said Mr Daley should be believed when he said he did not know Obeid before entering state politics. "Obeid and Tripodi had no presence at all in my old stomping ground of Maroubra, which Michael inherited [as MP]," Mr Carr said. "Michael Daley was never part of the Obeid circle. He was never drawn into the web being spun by those arch influence peddlers Obeid and Tripodi". Recollections of Mr Daley's factional standing differ from MP to MP, with some former members of the Labor Right calling him a member of Obeid's Terrigal faction while others insisted he was not part of the gang.

Loading "Daley was most definitely a Terrigal, but he was probably not always happy to be part of a group," a former member of the faction said this week. "But we could count on his support 95 per cent of the time." But another former Labor MP recalled Mr Daley as "more a middle of the road man" than a Terrigal. "I didn’t see him as an Eddie Obeid or Joe Tripodi person", the source said. But there is one stark point about Obeid and Mr Daley's relationship, according to senior Labor sources who were in former premier Morris Iemma's cabinet and caucus.

Mr Iemma was overthrown by his own faction, because he wanted to defy Obeid's and Mr Tripodi's demands and promote Mr Daley, among others, to cabinet. A senior Labor source said: "Obeid and Tripodi were apoplectic about Daley and Steve Whan coming into cabinet." Mr Iemma had wanted to renew his cabinet and replace ministers such as lands minister Tony Kelly and treasurer Michael Costa with "new blood". But the right-wing of the caucus revolted. Former NSW premier Morris Iemma was overthrown, partly for supporting Mr Daley. Credit:Kate Geraghty "At that time, Obeid and Tripodi were suspicious of Michael at best and outright hostile at worst," a senior Labor source, who was in Mr Iemma's cabinet at the time, said.

"In the end Michael was promoted [to cabinet] not through his relationship with Eddie but because Michael and Steve Whan and Paul McLeay stopped fighting Joe and Eddie. There was no point. By that stage Eddie and Joe controlled the right, the caucus and the government." It was Mr Iemma's support of Mr Daley, in part, that ended his premiership and political career, Labor sources said. Mr Daley said Obeid tried to finish his political career many times. "As a minister, I was required to meet with many people, including MPs. Anyone who knows me knows that he tried to kill my political career on a number of occasions," Mr Daley said. Mr Daley's final appearance in Obeid's diary on March 23, 2009, includes the line items "Michael Daley phone use" and "Michael Daley - Bylong Way Rd".

The Herald reported the following year that Obeid had written to then roads minister Mr Daley about a dangerous section of a road in the Bylong Valley without disclosing he owned property in the area. Obeid had been engaged by the local council to push for funding for Wollar Road, which feeds into Bylong Valley Way. Loading He had written his letter to Mr Daley about three weeks before the March 23 diary entry, a letter tabled to Parliament showed. However, Mr Daley had moved on from the portfolio before any decision on funding for a road upgrade was made. In comparison with Mr Daley’s five entries in the Obeid diaries, the name Tripodi features 44 times and Macdonald at least 36.

During factional brawling in 2008 and 2009, the Herald, The Australian Financial Review and The Daily Telegraph all listed Mr Daley as a member of the Terrigals. But one senior Labor source said: "By then, if you were in the Right, you were a Terrigal. To be a Terrigal meant not much. It was the major faction. You can't be condemned for that." Former MP Marie Andrews said she held Mr Daley in high regard and remembered him sitting "in the big group, in the centre unity faction". Mr Dastyari, the former NSW ALP secretary and federal senator, said: "Michael made an effort to get along with everybody - that's how he always operated on the Right." He insisted Mr Daley was never a Terrigal.

"The Terrigals did everything they could to stop Michael Daley getting into parliament," he said. As for the Obeid diary entry from May 26, 2008, that reads "Anthony Andrews, Michael Daley, Sam Dastyari", Mr Dastyari said: "From what I remember, we were trying to stop [Labor councillor] Anthony Andrews from quitting the Labor Party." Loading The Liberals have time and again raised Daley’s thanking of Obeid and Tripodi in his maiden speech to Parliament in 2005. Mr Daley told the Herald this year he had thanked Obeid because someone told him the powerbroker had handed out how-to-vote cards for him and it was protocol to acknowledge anyone who did. "As it turned out, he didn’t, anyway – which was par for the course," Mr Daley said.