Brown and Hatton Group Pty Ltd, the piggery company half-owned by the Prime Minister’s family company, had still not filed group audited accounts as required by the Australian Securities Commission, the Opposition spokesman on the arts, Senator Michael Baume, said yesterday.
It has, however, filed separate audited accounts for the parent company and the subsidiaries.
Senator Baume said that these showed a $1.9 million worsening in the overall position from the previous unaudited accounts. They showed also that overall losses in 1989-90 and 1990-91 were understated in the unaudited accounts by $1.7 million.
Senator Baume’s statement clarifies the position stated in a report on the parent company’s accounts published in üThe Canberra Times@ yesterday. Because no audited consolidated accounts had been filed, that report did not take account of audited changes throughout the group’s subsidiaries and wrongly stated that the overall position was $8 million worse and the profit-and-loss position in 1989-90 and 1990-91 was $4.4 million worse.
Senator Baume said the parent company now had accumulated losses of $7,351,445. In addition to losses for subsidiaries, the total loss was more than $10 million, subject to inter-company balances.
“”These accumulated losses would normally have meant that the group’s liabilities would have exceeded its assets by several millions of dollars, but the absence of consolidated accounts (which are required by the ASC) makes it difficult to determine the exact amount,” he said.
The group’s directors had increased the value of buildings by $4 million and had changed for the fourth time in six months the method of accounting for the $4,450,000 owing to the former Minister for Tourism, John Brown. The moves had given a paper boost to shareholders’ funds of about $7 million.