Bryan Green’s spectacular backfire on travel costs in the Hydro Tasmania GBE Scrutiny Hearing today highlights the rank hypocrisy of Labor’s political games.
Attempting to score a political point about a Hydro executive attending a business course in France earlier this year, Mr Green ended up with egg on his face when it was revealed that Hydro first sent an executive on this course in September 2013 – when he was the Minister for Energy.
This is another display of rank hypocrisy from Labor. They submitted an RTI to Hydro seeking only travel costs after April this year, in a deliberate and devious attempt to make sure the excessive travel under their watch, including the first business course in France, was not revealed.
It has become a common strategy of Labor to exclude their period of government from RTI requests, and today proved exactly why they have been doing that.
I was extremely disappointed to learn that these excessive travel expenditures had occurred earlier this year and immediately put all Government Energy Businesses on notice that travel costs must be prudent, sensible and more in line with community expectations.
Following this incident, we issued new guidelines to GBEs in May which require all travel approved to be able to demonstrate tangible benefits for the business and the state.
As a result, travel costs at Hydro have reduced by 33 per cent or $125,000 for the first quarter of 2014-15 when compared with the same period last year.
Once his unforced error became evident Mr Green tried to backtrack at a million miles an hour, asking a follow up question to try to demonstrate that Ministers don’t directly sign off on GBE travel.
It wasn’t the only time Mr Green was embarrassed by revelations in today’s hearings, when he repeatedly tried to talk over the top of evidence that his government spent $160 million over the actual value in purchasing the Tamar Valley Power Station.
Matthew Groom, Minister for Energy
