IT’S probably not a prerequisite to leave your brains at home when in government in Tasmania – it’s just happens to be they way they work.
Did anyone, anywhere in the vacant halls and brains of state government think to tell Education Minister Nick McKim that Royce Fairbrother’s company was about to get the tender to build a new school at Port Sorell?
Did no one consider the fact it might be a bad look for both Mr Fairbrother and the government no matter how rigid the tender process?
Mr McKim appointed Mr Fairbrother to chair the group advising on school viability in August. That’s the group that emerged after Mr McKim’s schools closures disaster earlier in the year.
No one is suggesting Mr Fairbrother has done anything but acted in good faith. Like a lot of things he’s done for the community, he’s volunteering his time to chair the viability group anyway.
But surely someone in government must have considered the fact that the Port Sorell tender had the potential to make Mr Fairbrother’s position on the viability reference group more difficult.
It would certainly put him in an occasionally awkward position when dealing with some of the threatened schools like Sassafras.
Sassafras is not that far from Port Sorell and was on the government’s closure hit-list earlier this year.
