Page 3980 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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The Canberra public also reacted strongly to the Rhodium fiasco, perhaps best typified by this letter to the editor in the Canberra Times by a Mr J Lonergan from Isaacs. I quote:
Anyone who reads the report by the Assembly’s public accounts committee about the Rhodium farce will be in turn flabbergasted, incredulous and then angry.
The leading entrepreneur in this saga is Jon Stanhope, who has a quality track record of involvement in disaster.
Why Rhodium ever had to be created is a mystery, given that its main task was managing a fleet of vehicles.
Naturally, in the absence of firm direction from Stanhope, and under a board that seems to have been on leave, the Rhodium chief executive officer set about aiming for additional tasks and creating a working environment not seen since the Garden of Eden. Given the commercially competitive nature of the expanded plans for the organisation, red tape was understandably cut to the limit, so much so that almost no documentation could be found to determine the origins of various practices subsequently deemed by investigators to be somewhat unsavoury. Among the latter were such benefits as provision of a luxury vehicle (Lexus) for the CEO, a $10,000 cash amount sent to her while on a visit to Paris, a credit card allowance seemingly unconstrained by any rules, employment practices not divorced from family loyalties, and no rules and little accounting for entertainment expenses.
Sponsorship deals were judged to be necessary one for the ACT Brumbies cost $460,000. Such ventures, it was explained, offered “opportunities for corporate hospitality”, which presumably meant that the CEO and a chosen elite could take selected guests to enjoy top class rugby union from corporate boxes. They also managed to get to national rugby league grand finals and to the Melbourne Cup. Unfortunately, a praiseworthy initiative to introduce IT to control activities was somewhat lacking in professionalism and collapsed with a loss of “between $400,000 and $700,000”.
And now we can watch everyone duck for cover, led by the redoubtable Jon Stanhope.
We saw the other end of the spectrum this year when the Chief Minister chose to micromanage the business of the LDA. The Chief Minister objected strongly to some media commentary on his pet project, OwnPlace. Just to remind everyone here, the Chief Minister, after choking on his weeties while reading a negative story on OwnPlace, responded by furiously emailing a directive to his chief of staff demanding a number of actions, including taking out a half-page advertisement in the Canberra Times to refute these claims. When asked during estimates this year if this was an appropriate thing to do, the Chief Minister replied, “Yes, absolutely.”
On the one hand we have shareholders who cannot give strategic directions to one territory-owned corporation, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars; on the other hand, we have shareholders who can micromanage down to the point of placing advertising. Where is the management and where is the consistency?
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