Bob Gordon and Brian Green in a Forestry photo
TT finance analyst John Lawrence penned this despairing addendum in comments to this article, How Labor pinched IGA funds for Forestry Tasmania, before ABC Online published Premier Lara Giddings’ pronouncment that, incredibly, a strategic review into Forestry Tasmania “may never be publicly released”.
Just a bit of an addendum to the hurried article.
First when I said in the second last para that “It is likely that Gunns did not include amounts allegedly owing to Gunns” I obviously meant “It is likely that Gunns did not include amounts allegedly owing to FT”. (Ed: Corrected).
Second it is the sequence of events that is most interesting. When did the question of a value on the residual rights arise? Gunns threw in the towel on native forests and abandoned contracts 917 and 918, FT then informed the Government that Gunns was insolvent and unlikely to pay the $26m to FT which in turn would make FT insolvent? So the Government needed to find a solution for its wholly owned subsidiary?
So when did the question of residual rights surface? After the possibility of Gunns’ insolvency?
It is clear the Government asked the Solicitor-General to advise on the matter of residual rights. Not the value but whether it was possible they still existed.
To add a bit of gloss to proceedings the Government employed a Probity Auditor, not to vet whether rights existed or whether they had any value, but simply whether due process was followed. Which simply meant to check whether the final outcome was consistent with all the relevant documents and correspondence.
And surprise surprise, it was.
Why was the particular Probity Auditor selected?
Why not our Auditor General?
Well one of Tasmania’s leading ethicists, the leader of the Government in the Leg Co explained in answer to a question recently that “the Auditor-General is authorised to act independently; he has complete discretion in the performance of his functions and is not subject to direction into whether or not a particular audit is conducted or report made”.
Furthermore it “could potentially compromise his ability to perform a holistic, external and independent review of the processes relating to the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement in its entirety”.
Better not give the job to someone with too much discretion. Much better to get someone else to do the job, like some guy who just happened to be a Government GBE appointee on the Board of MAIB. The Government’s overriding concern for independence caused it to select as Probity Auditor a person who had recently been bestowed a Government favour.
I’m not sure I understand ‘independence’ any longer. Like ‘Labor values’ it is becoming meaningless.
Then there is the question as to how the value of the rights was determined.
We are still in the dark.
The Government unbundled the process:
• Get the SG to give an opinion on whether rights exist.
• Then get another guy to pass judgement on whether due process was followed.
• Get someone else to decide on what the rights are worth.
• Keep everyone in the dark, at arm’s length from one another and then hey presto, abracadabra, Gunns gets $23.5m and FT 11.5m.
Barbara Etter, we need you.
• ABC Online: Forestry review may never be released
The Tasmanian Premier has admitted a strategic review into Forestry Tasmania’s finances may never be made public.
The independent report which was due at the end of last month is expected to shed light on the financial difficulties of the state-owned company.
Forestry Tasmania posted an operating loss of $12 million last financial year and the Premier was forced to vouch for its solvency for a third time, only a few months ago.
Lara Giddings says she now has the report but is yet to read it.
“We don’t know whether or not we will ever be releasing it,” she said.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to happen around that report and in fact I haven’t personally seen it as yet and I need to have a look at it.
“It needs to go to Cabinet we need to consider just how much of the report is commercial in-confidence.”
