Environment
Gadd’s $400,000 cash payout
FORMER top bureaucrat Scott Gadd will walk away from the Tasmanian public service with a cash payout of almost $400,000.
Mr Gadd, the former head of the abolished Environment, Parks, Heritage and Arts department, will receive a bonus year’s salary of more than $250,000 plus owed holiday pay because the Bartlett Government has not found him another job.
The former political chief of staff to late premier Jim Bacon was at the centre of a controversy earlier this year when his $250,000-a-year contract as one of the state’s nine departmental chiefs was renewed just days before his department was abolished.
Accusations of sweetheart deals for Labor mates were made when it was revealed the Government had decided to scrap the Environment department before Mr Gadd’s lucrative contract had been re-signed.
Mr Gadd said he had no idea his department faced the axe when he renegotiated his employment deal on April 22.
Since then, he has been on full pay of $250,000 a year, plus a car and superannuation, while fulfilling relatively menial tasks as strategic director of national parks.
His employment contract stipulated that unless he was offered an equivalent job by the Government that he liked and accepted, he could walk away on December 31 with a bonus year’s pay.
Mr Gadd confirmed yesterday he would leave the public service at the end of the year.
Premier David Bartlett guaranteed when news of Mr Gadd’s renewal surfaced that public money would not be wasted.
Earlier, on Tasmanian Times: John Hawkins, heritage landscapes, Scott Gadd, Graham Corney, Peter James and David Bedford