Thread by @jommy_tee

[MEGA THREAD]

THE PEA AND SHELL GAME

A thread that deals with the FOI process and Scott Morrison’s sacking from Tourism Australia [TA].

Warning: long thread, contains (attempted) humour & music & some new information as well!

You have to be pretty shitty at your job to get sacked as the head of an Aust fed govt agency.

It’s a very small and select field.

So come on down Scott Morrison, the only person who managed it and went on to become PM.

Yet his time at TA (late 2004 to July 2006) is shrouded in mystery.

The public record shows Morrison was sacked by the TA board in July 2006 - his appointment as MD formally terminated on 31 July, but announced a few days later.

The TA Board’s reasoning for sacking him has never been revealed.

The exact size of his payout has never been revealed by officials.

If you go to the dark recesses of Hansard (buried on page 249 of the 1 November 2006 HoR) you’ll find the Q&As…answers of the kinda, sorta type. I don’t believe the historical artefact was widely publicised by the media - if you missed it, here it is:

Key points:

* Rumours of a $500K payout - denied by the Min (no $ figure given)

* “Confidential agreement between TA & Morrison” - neither the Min nor portfolio dept are parties to the agreement

* Minister was informed of the TA Board’s decision.

Morrison’s payout and its secrecy was well canvassed by Karen Middleton in the Sat Paper.

The concerns over the amount of such concern that the Rem Tribunal met with the Min after Morrison was sacked.

thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/…

The Sat Paper tried FOI to get hold of a letter from the Rem Tribunal to TA, but access was refused…yet in 2007 several journos appeared to have access to it.

From a SMH article on 24 June 2006 smh.com.au/national/knive…

The vagaries of FOI.

I decided to see if the docs mentioned by the Min in Parliament could be accessed by FOI.

If you don’t have a go, you don’t get a go - right?

I asked TA for 3 things in my FOI request:

1. Any relevant TA Board meeting papers

2. All docs from TA to the Min conveying the Board’s decision

3. The confidential deed of agreement between ScoMo and TA

Let’s start with confidential deed - used as a ring of steel to stop any official from ever speaking about the reasons for the Titanium Man’s sacking.

Colour me pink, TA's response says the document:

IS. NOT. HELD. BY. TOURISM AUSTRALIA.

Well poke me in the eye with a 3 word slogan - WTF?

Perhaps, the deed rusted away, disintegrated, got eaten by moths, evaporated, was misfiled, misplaced, or just plain missing…convenient for some, inconvenient for public accountability.

Another a set of 3 word slogans entered my head:

Don’t hold a hose - don’t hold an agreement

Now, let’s try the briefing to the Minister by TA.

TA again responded:

NOT. HELD. BY. TOURISM AUSTRALIA.

OK, the Minister tells Parl one thing, but all trace of Deed and briefing to Min by TA has vanished.

I can only conclude that TA must've phoned the advice to the Min, can't see them having used mental telepathy.

Shades of when I asked for the KPMG audit that Morrison commissioned on the “So, where the bloody hell are you?’ campaign …. all traces of docs have disappeared.

INSERT LINK
michaelwest.com.au/where-the-bloo…

The school of FOI hard knocks were now punching me in the head…so I went back to TA, asked ‘em pretty please check again, especially given the Minister’s answers.

“We confirm that Tourism Australia has undertaken a thorough search and has not identified any documents in its possession within the scope of your request #2 an #3.

Yowsers.

Sorry history seems to be repeating itself ..BTW Splitz Enz you were wrong

History, involving our PM’s past, again erased before very my eyes….guess no one thought Morrison would amount to much after he got sacked, and hence didn’t preserve his historical footprint.

Ok what about the TA Board paper…at last some good news…a document “Board Meeting July 2006” is within scope of my request.

Hallelujah …cue musical interlude by Leonard Cohen….before we get back to the chase and some really interesting stuff.

Here I was getting my hopes up but it was false dawn - as the death knell of any FOI request is provided to me:

“…have decided to refuse you access to the document”.

Like a drunk prizefighter, I pick myself off the canvas, brush off my gloves, and read the reasons why.

In the FOI caper you get used to knock backs. Usually you are refused access because of privacy, national security, cabinet-in-confidence, third party objections blah blah blah.

Any loophole in the FOI to refuse access is religiously pursued by the bureaucrats.

In this case all of the TA Board paper is exempt from FOI, with personal privacy outweighing the public interest...based on TA's assessments they gave short shrift [my opinion] to public interest - it ran a distant 2nd to protecting Morrison's privacy.

Still, I’m intrigued about two novel reasons given to me for the refusal of my request.

The first goes to the impact on Morrison and why he should be afforded privacy.

Appears one of the reasons the paper is hush hush because it may impinge on Morrison’s future employment prospects [my interpretation - hard pressed to find credible alternative to that interpretation].

The 2nd novel reason for denying access was the doc would reveal TA’s magic HR formula on how they sack a MD.

Yep ya read right, the release of the paper would have a substantial adverse impact on the management of TA personnel and it would impact TA’s ability to negotiate future separation arrangements

So what you gonna do.

You seek an internal review of the decision putting together a cogent set of contentions …. Below are my responses to these two novel refusal grounds.

My contention that if Morrison’s performance was so poor that publicly airing would harm is employment prospects was deemed illogical by TA.

TA being of the view if that was the case it would be provide grounds to protect Morrison’s privacy.

In short the response from TA was a pat on the head and a fart in my general directio.

Essentially suck it up schmuck, the protection of Morrison’s personal privacy over rules public interest [paraphrase].

While this game of FOI pea and shell means I've come up empty handed… there remain many unanswered questions around the sacking of Morrison, indeed this latest FOI attempt raises many new ones:

The deed, where is the deed? My kingdom for a deed? Who now holds the Deed?

Where is the briefing to the Min?

Did the Board overstep the mark in awarding a payout bigger than the Rem Tribunal wanted?

How badly did Morrison do his job?

How ludicrous is the notion that TA still clings to a secret process for sacking MDs?….one that is more than 15 years old and can never be publicly revealed despite it being made redundant by a host specific and broader HR/IR regulatory changes

So who's up for another game of pea and shell?

COUNT ME ....... IN

[ENDS]