Politics
$500k payout cream to Addis
A FORMER head bureaucrat pocketed nearly $200,000 in leave entitlements, Freedom of Information documents reveal.
The money was over and above his $315,000 contract settlement.
Last month the Mercury revealed former Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources chief Mark Addis had received a whopping $300,000 golden handshake after floating between jobs for nearly two years.
Mr Addis had no formal job description or even an office, despite being paid more than the Premier.
Now new documents reveal Mr Addis was also reimbursed for more than 730 hours of owed annual leave and 74 days of long service leave, totalling $196,562.
The windfall was not revealed in Premier David Bartlett’s press release on May 5 in which he said simply that Mr Addis would be paid “normal leave entitlements”.
It takes Mr Addis’s total payout to $511,562, which is among the highest contract settlements paid by State Government in recent years, below only the $650,000 paid to former governor Richard Butler.
Mr Addis is a former head of the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania who was head-hunted by former premier Jim Bacon to lead DIER.
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Other senior bureaucrats who received payouts include former head of the axed Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts, Scott Gadd, who left in December with $400,000, and former premier Paul Lennon’s chief-of-staff Daniel Leesong, who was given bit roles for 15 months until he resigned late last year with an eight-week payout of his $170,000-a-year contract.
Will Hodgman:
Will Hodgman MP
Leader of the State Opposition
Saturday 5 June, 2010
Labor’s new $500,000 kick to the taxpayer
Revelations of a $511,562 payout for Mark Addis is another kick to the Tasmanian taxpayer who continues to pay for an array of poor decisions by the Bartlett Government.
One month ago, David Bartlett issued a media release stating that Mr Addis “will be paid out a year’s entitlements based on his salary of $295,000 year, a negotiated $20,000 compensation for the loss of use of a motor vehicle plus normal leave entitlements.”
Now it is revealed that Mr Addis has been allowed to accumulate almost $200,000 extra in leave, not disclosed by Mr Bartlett, and quietly paid out.
Why wasn’t the total amount revealed by David Bartlett in his statement of 5 May?
This is another appalling lack of transparency by the Premier. Tasmanians are entitled to know how their taxpayer money is spent – especially in a case where Mr Addis has been kept employed as a Department Secretary but has not acted in this capacity for almost two years.
We don’t need to look hard for other examples of Labor’s abysmal record on paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to their mates, and former mates in the form of special payouts: Sacked Department Secretary Scott Gadd got $400,000; Sidelined Premier’s minder Daniel Leesong got $170,000 and, before that, there was the infamous ex gratia payment to former Governor Richard Butler.
Labor seems to have little concept of how to efficiently spend taxpayers’ money. Mr Addis and Mr Gadd were perfectly capable of continuing to earn their salaries in senior roles, but were simply paid off.
The average Tasmanian will find this latest blow a bitter pill to swallow, particularly those who are feeling the pain of jobs losses across the state’s industries.