We saw another example of the Australian Labor Party’s great historic strength and weakness last week: stick by your mates. And especially stick by mates who have stuck by other mates in the past.
And thus the ACT Labor Government stuck by Charles Wright, defending his appointment as chairman of the ACT Tourism Advisory Board.
Looking at the public record in the companies office, the transcript of the proceedings of the WA Inc Royal Commission, the report of that commission, and what was said the Legislative Assembly, it is easy to conclude that Mr Wright is an unsuitable appointment and should be removed if he does not resign first.
The Royal Commission shows Mr Wright transmitted $80,000 through his company’s accounts to Barbara Brush. Mrs Brush was former secretary to Brian Burke, former Western Australian Premier. Mrs Brush was without a job and without prospect of one.
Mr Wright’s cross-examination shows he did not inquire into whether Mrs Brush was doing a reasonable amount of work to earn the money. He assumed everything was okay because Brian Burke said it was. He was a conduit for a lot of money with no questions asked _ doing a job for his mate Brian Burke. (The relevant extracts were published in this paper yesterday.)
There was no adverse finding against Mr Wright, but eyebrows of anyone thinking of appointing him to an important government board should have been raised because it revealed a man willing and imprudent enough to allow large sums of money to pass through his account without asking question.
The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said Mr Wright had been appointed (in March this year) because of his excellence as a businessman.
This displays her government’s negligence, ignorance and naivety, and determination to look after its own ahead of general community interest.
How could she possibly justify appointing a man for his business excellence when the month before a company that he was a director of went bust? Didn’t they do any company searches? Or did they go ahead irrespective of what they found? When the companies Mr Wright was director of went into liquidation, there was a fair amount of fuss in the town. The printers’ union went to the Industrial Relations Commission seeking a redundancy arrangement. Did the Government just ignore this, or was it ignorant of it?
Having made its appointment in March despite the liquidation of the companies, did the Government do any follow-up, or did it just assume that this was a case of “”bad-luck”.
A company search after May 24 should have sent the alarm bells ringing. The liquidator’s report on Canberra Mail and Print Pty Ltd shows the company owed $176,960.55 in unpaid group tax.
That is especially damning. Group tax is the money an employer takes out of employees’ pay packets for income tax. It is the basis of the pay-as-you-earn system. The law requires it to be remitted monthly to the tax office.
An inquiry with the liquidator yesterday revealed that it was a claim spreading over some months, including months in which Mr Wright was director.
In a winding up unpaid group tax takes preference over everything else. If there are not enough company assets to pay it, the law provides that directors can be held personally liable for it.
After citing the economic downturn as cause for the company’s failure, the liquidator wrote, “”In my opinion, further inquiry into the solvency and conduct of the business is warranted.”
Many directors do not have active involvement in the day-to-day running of companies, and they cannot be expected to pay attention to the minutiae of tax payments. However, the law requires certain standards of diligence. It seems to me they have not been met by Mr Wright.
Further, when defending his position Mr Wright said that all employees had been paid out as far as he was aware.
Well, either Mr Wright is a very unaware sort of director or he wanted to create a misleading impression. The liquidator revealed yesterday that more than $20,000 was owed by Canberra Mail and Print to employees, mainly in annual leave.
It seems that the ACT Government allowed its allegiance to its political mates get in the way of making the best appointment for the ACT. In sum, the evidence shows that Mr Wright is not suitable. He has not displayed the business acumen or diligence that one would expect of a person being appointed chairman of the Tourism Advisory Board.
For raising the issue at Question Time last week, Gary Humphries (Ind) was chided and two Opposition MLAs (Kate Carnell and Tony de Domenico) were censured by the Assembly on a party-line vote with Helen Szuty (Ind) voting with the Government.
On any view of Royal Commission report and transcript and of the company records, an Opposition would have been remiss in its duty in not raising the matter at Question Time, and indeed in raising it the way it did. That is what the Parliament is for: to question the Executive, and in this instance to question the Executive about one of its appointments.
The prize for wetness goes to Helen Szuty for voting with the Government when as an independent she should be encouraging questioning of Executive action. The prize for political hypocrisy goes to Michael Moore (Ind) for skulking out of the chamber before the vote. Mr Moore, it will be recalled, was the man who championed the use of parliamentary privilege in the Westpac-letters and the Kingston Pub case in the quest for the people’s right to know.
The prize for political irrelevance goes to Trevor Kaine (Lib) for asking a question about chemicals in the water just as the Opposition was exposing government weakness. And the prize for tangential novelty goes to Lou Westende who asked the first Dorothy Dixer from the Opposition bench (about the worthiness of an international airport in Canberra), giving the Government undeserved breathing space.
Since Ms Carnell has been leader some young, enthusiastic and politically skilled staffers have been drafted from the Hill. They have started to make a difference, but they are going to have to do some more work on some of their own MLAs. Senator Bronwyn Bishop is to give them some further advice next week. ACT estimates hearings should become interesting.