Death of the Forestry Department: Part 3

The Lake Leake scandal received a lot of publicity in the 1940s. Witnesses gave strangely contradictory evidence to the Royal Commission and several State officers were publicly embarrassed, but to this day it remains unclear just what, in fact, happened. Judge Kirby decided it was a storm in a teacup.

Lake Leake: the deal

In 1937, the Lands Department received a set of applications to purchase Crown land near Lake Leake. There were 10 applicants, each asking for 600 acres. One applicant was A.G. Newman, a Melbourne businessman. The other nine were Newman’s relations or friends. Each applicant said the land was wanted for agricultural and pastoral purposes.

Although the land applied for was not State forest, it was Government policy to refer the applications to the Forestry Department. If there was good forest on the land, the Department would object and the land would not be alienated. The Secretary for Lands, C.M. Pitt, sent the Newman applications to the Forestry Department in the last week of November 1937, marked ‘urgent’. There they were ‘ticked’ by the Department’s Chief Inspector, T.J. Stubbs, before they were passed on to the Divisional Forester, E.K. Cox, with a request to have the blocks inspected.

The Secretary of the Forestry Department, B.A.C. Elliott, said that on 16 December 1937 he received a phone call from the Minister for Lands, T.H. Davies. According to Elliott, Davies instructed him to send the 10 applications back to the Lands Department marked ‘no forestry objection’. Elliott complied, although the blocks had not yet been properly assessed by his Department.

Newman and associates bought the blocks as second-class grazing land for 5s an acre. It wasn’t entirely grazing land, however, as it included beds of millable hardwood.

Lake Leake: the timber

‘Pastoralist’ A.G. Newman was a sawmiller. In May 1936 he had bought the Mt Foster Sawmilling Co at Avoca and was cutting 5000 super feet per acre on a 1000-acre permit area at Lewis Hill. Following the Lake Leake purchase, Newman owned or controlled another 6000 acres of forest. The timber had come free with the land, and no royalty was payable when Newman went logging on his own property. How had the State lost this revenue?

The Royal Commission heard confusing evidence. Elliott said he knew that what he did ‘departed from the usual departmental practice’, that he had not asked Minister Davies for a written confirmation of instructions, and that it was his understanding that there was no valuable timber in the area. Cox said he had not inspected the area before he was asked by either Stubbs or Elliott to return the applications. Stubbs said he had heard rumours that then-Premier A.G. Ogilvie was interested in the progress of the applications, so he did not object, although he had heard from the Lands Department’s district surveyor (who surveyed the blocks’ boundaries) that five of the blocks were thickly timbered. The surveyor had sent his findings to his superior, Pitt, but Pitt had not questioned the Forestry Department when the applications were returned with ‘No forestry objection’. Newman’s son, testifying during a visit of the Royal Commission to Melbourne, said he was unaware of any urgency in the applications, and had no idea why they were being pushed by the Lands Department in Hobart.

The Conservator of Forests, S.W. Steane, said he been away from his office until a few days after Elliott returned the Newman applications to the Lands Department. When Steane heard the applications had been returned, he was annoyed that the Forestry Department had not been given the opportunity to report on the blocks. In October 1938 he met with the then-Minister for Forests, Robert Cosgrove, to complain. According to Steane, Cosgrove said he knew that Davies had ordered the return of the applications, and that he had been present when Davies made the call. Steane said Cosgrove told him to write a report if he had a complaint. Steane did not write a report because it was clear that his Minister had no objection to what had happened.

Premier Cosgrove told the Royal Commission that he had a vague recollection of a conversation with Steane, but that everything Steane said about it was untrue. He had known nothing about the Newman applications, and had not been present when Davies made his phone call, about which he also had known nothing. He had not told Steane to write a report.

The first Steane knew that the applications had been marked ‘No forestry objection’ was after hearing a report of Darling’s speech to the Legislative Council on 15 November 1945. He was astonished: ‘The thing came to me like a bombshell’. He directed Senior Forest Officer C.W. Fidler to make a new assessment of the millable timber on the 10 blocks. Fidler’s estimate was ca 33 000 000 super feet. Another and more systematic timber assessment was carried out in January 1946 by a team led by Forestry Department Planning Officer A.D. Helms. The assessors reported 50 000 000 super feet, and Helms told the Royal Commission he thought the 6000 acres had been selected to include as much good timber as possible.

Lake Leake: the bet

At the time of the Lake Leake purchase, Lt-Col W.P. Taylor was a Swansea publican. He had met Newman in late 1936, and about a year later Newman told Taylor that he was hoping to use timber sales from the Lake Leake land to finance pastoral development of the properties. Taylor heard the project would employ 25 men.

‘He was interested in the matter as he wanted to see employment provided, and also because he was a hotelkeeper. Taylor said during September or October, 1937, the Premier (Mr A. G. Ogilvie) was at the hotel at Swansea. He told the Premier of Newman’s Lake Leake proposal, and that he was enthusiastic over it as it would mean much to Swansea. The Premier told him not to be too enthusiastic over the matter but volunteered to let him have a chart. In November the Newman family told him they had applied for the land. He telephoned the Premier (Mr Ogilvie) and asked him if it would be possible “to shake the applications up.” The Premier was at the hotel at Christmas, 1938. When asked about the applications he said they had been approved.’ (Mercury, 2 February 1946)

Taylor was elected to Parliament in 1940 on an electoral recount after Eric Ogilvie’s resignation, and became Minister for Forests in 1943. No evidence was offered to any of the forestry inquiries of the 1940s that he had been directly involved in the Lake Leake transaction in 1937-38, or that while Minister he had done anything to assist Newman’s sawmilling interests or interfere with Forestry Department management. Why, then, was his name in the papers?

Taylor remained friendly with Newman, who was also a horse owner. Just before the Grand Nationals in Melbourne in July 1945, Taylor rang Newman. Newman said he had Pay David in the Grand National Hurdles and Quixotic in the Grand National Steeplechase. He suggested that Taylor meet him in the member’s enclosure to watch the races.

Taylor, Newman and Taylor’s friend C.O. O’Conor were in the enclosure when the Steeplechase started. Taylor asked O’Conor if he would like to make a private bet on Quixotic. O’Conor declined, but they agreed the odds would be 50 to 1. Newman then offered Taylor those odds on a £1 bet as the horses were passing the stand. Taylor accepted and offered Newman a £1 note. Newman turned it away, saying he thought he would be paying Taylor.

Quixotic won, and Newman paid Taylor £50. In the Hotel Australia bar the following Monday, Taylor had a few drinks and bragged that he had won £500 from £10 on Quixotic. A Mercury reporter was present and asked Taylor if he could write up the story. Taylor agreed, but only if his name was left out of the article. The article said a well-known Tasmanian parliamentarian had won £500.

Was the £50 a bribe from Newman, under the guise of a wager, for Taylor’s assistance with the Lake Leake deal eight years earlier, or for favours in forestry matters in 1945? Judge Kirby decided this was highly unlikely, and admired Taylor’s honesty in publicly admitting that he had exaggerated his winnings.

Lake Leake: the aftermath

Taylor lost his seat in the 1946 State election, and Opposition politicians continued to press the Labor Government on the Lake Leake land purchase in the years following the Royal Commission. In December 1948 the House of Assembly agreed on a motion: ‘In the opinion of this House investigations should be made immediately into the practicability of acquiring 6,000 acres of land from Messrs. Newman to recover 55,000,000 super ft. of timber, and that compensation for the land be equivalent to the purchase price plus improvements, and for the timber the amount the Crown was paid for it – nothing.’ The land was later sold to a private buyer.

Birth of the Forestry Commission

Tasmanian forestry came under the control of a three-member Forestry Commission on 15 April 1947. The Commission was expected to act at arm’s length from the forestry Minister, as the Mercury had editorialised a year earlier: ‘The main interest of Parliament should be to reorganise the department so that there can never be a repetition of such sorry history.’ The Commission would be empowered to do long-range forestry planning, free of political interference.

The establishment of the Commission began half a century of apolitical forestry in Tasmania, a tradition continued today by its corporate successor, Forestry Tasmania. No longer would the Premier or forestry Ministers be able to corrupt forestry planning processes with political demands, and no longer would private forestry companies be able to secure special favours by lobbying politicians. Tasmanian forestry became scandal-free and large flocks of forest-grown pigs became a common sight, flying slowly in circles around Parliament House in Hobart.

Bob Mesibov is a former Tasmanian forester with an interest in local history. His website http://www.circularheadhistory.info/forests recounts little-known stories from the forests of Circular Head.

The full Royal Commission report is in the Tasmanian Parliamentary Papers for the year 1946.

EARLIER:
• Death of the Forestry Department (Part 2)
• Death of the Forestry Department (Part 1)