Meanwhile: Michael Stedman, Mercury:
April 19, 2010 08:08am
A SENIOR state bureaucrat has no job description or even an office, despite being paid more than $300,000 a year.
Former infrastructure secretary Mark Addis is contracted to earn nearly $5700 a week until December 2012.
That is more than Premier David Bartlett, who gets $273,143 a year to run the state.
But despite repeated requests last week, the State Government did not detail Mr Addis’s role or responsibilities.
Mr Addis was shunted from the Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Department shortly after Mr Bartlett became Premier in May 2008.
Taxpayers continued to pay his wages while he was on a year-long secondment to Infrastructure Australia — the Commonwealth body responsible for assessing bids for the massive federal economic stimulus fund.
During that period the State Government was attacked for receiving only $50 million of the $22 billion fund.
Mr Addis has had no formal role with the State Government and has performed only periodic contract work since he returned from assignment in October last year,
It is understood he does not even have an office in the Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Department.
His name does not appear in the internal government phone directory or on the department’s organisational chart.
Government insiders said there was virtually no work available for Mr Addis appropriate to his salary level.
“As far as we are concerned, there is no work or likely to be any work at or near the level of secretary,” one source said.
The ex-Forest Industry Association chief executive was headhunted by former premier Jim Bacon in 1998.
It is understood he received a five-year contract renewal shortly before Paul Lennon resigned and handed the reins of government to Mr Bartlett in May 2008.
