news The NBN Company has defended the actions of its chair Ziggy Switkowski in breaching the Caretaker Conventions, claiming that the executive’s hand was forced by the need to defend the company’s reputation.
This morning it was revealed that Switkowski had willfully and deliberately breached the Caretaker Conventions which ensure the political independence of the public service and government companies such as the NBN company during an election campaign.
A letter from Martin Parkinson (PDF), the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, to Shadow Finance Minister Tony Burke, confirmed Switkowski had breached the Caretaker Conventions several weeks ago with an article defending the NBN company’s actions in targeting whistleblowers, following Australian Federal Police raids on Labor premises designed to track down the whistleblowers.
Parkinson’s letter revealed Switkowski had been “strongly” advised the article would breach the Caretaker Conventions, but ignored the advice and went ahead anyway.
Speaking in Perth this afternoon, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the NBN company was doing “everything they can to cover up for Malcolm Turnbull’s incompetence and their own maladministration”.
Shorten said Switkowski was an “otherwise respectable businessman”, but that he had perpetrated a “shameful breach of the Caretaker Conventions”.
“Yet again, NBN Co are doubling down on the cover-up, on the denial,” he said.
In response to the issue, the NBN company this afternoon issued a statement firstly noting that the Caretaker Guidelines issued by PM&C state: “[government companies] …should observe the conventions and practices unless to do so would conflict with their legal obligations or compelling organisational requirements”.
The NBN company further stated:
“Any accusation that the company’s staff, management, its board and (by implication) its shareholder departments have conspired to keep large cost increases secret from the Australian people is not only plainly and demonstrably false, but is a serious accusation in light of the Corporations act (for example section 184).”
“This is obviously not acceptable and the opinion piece addressed the allegations in a manner commensurate with the mode in which they were made; that is, publicly in the national media.”
Section 184 of the Corporations Act has a number of complex provisions.
It firstly deals with the fact that directors and other officers of a corporation commit an offence if they do not deal in good faith and attempt to faithfully act in the best interests of that corporation.
However, it also deals with the regulated behaviour of employees of a corporation, stating that they are also committing an offence if they use their position dishonestly, or for obtaining information which may benefit themselves or cause detriment to the corporation.
It appears that the NBN company is arguing that as its chair, Switkowski was required to act on behalf of the NBN company in defending its reputation against accusations that it had concealed information that its rollout of the Coalition’s Multi-Technology Model was not going as planned.
The documents leaked by whistleblowers have outlined a range of problems with the Coalition’s version of the NBN, including cost blow-outs, delays to the NBN rollout schedule, concerns about the quality of legacy networks the NBN company is acquiring from Telstra and Optus, and more. The NBN company has consistently questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.
It is not yet clear what the consequences will be for Switkowski and others within the NBN company who may have contributed to the article or helped get it approved.
Image credit: NBN company
They got caught and now are trying to deflect.
Typical.
This!
A Royal Commission is required!!!
Hell yeah, but I’m starting to think the RC needs to be broadened to all LPA dealings, not just the NBN.
True, the corruption within the LPA is clearly endemic!
The nbn(tm) media dept defends it’s boss.
Too funny? No.
Too sad? No.
Too outrageous? Yeah, that fits.
But there is no conflict of interest, not even self interest! ROFL
To the media staff of NBNCo. Your Chairman breached the caretaker conventions of Australia. And he did it despite advice from senior independent public servants. And now you are vainly trying to defend his actions. BS!
So come on @karinakeisler Either here or on twitter. Defend you boss and by default – the PM of Australia.
Waiting …..
“shareholder departments have conspired to keep large cost increases secret from the Australian people is not only plainly and demonstrably false”
So whoever called the AFP should be jailed for misuse of Federal justice for the leaks that were “plainly and demonstrably false”?
Leaks are true.. Leaks are false.. Leaks are true.. Leaks are false.
This is where putting non-public servants in charge of whats effectively a public service department causes problems. They operate with a corporate mentality without due respect given to the numerous laws and Act’s that govern your job, and end up breaking the law, intentionally or otherwise.
Its why the public service is so different to a regular job; the laws you have to work under heavily limit how you can do the job.
Hey Renai, could you provide a link to the nbn(tm) media release?
There is no media release — just an email to yours truly from Ms Keisler. It states:
The Caretaker Guidelines state that: “[government companies] …should observe the conventions and practices unless to do so would conflict with their legal obligations or compelling organisational requirements”.
Any accusation that the company’s staff, management, its board and (by implication) its shareholder departments have conspired to keep large cost increases secret from the Australian people is not only plainly and demonstrably false, but is a serious accusation in light of the Corporations act (for example section 184). This is obviously not acceptable and the opinion piece addressed the allegations in a manner commensurate with the mode in which they were made; that is, publicly in the national media.
I think she doesn’t understand that an investigation has occurred, and that investigation found Ziggy in breach of the caretaker guidelines…. They have no leg to stand on.
Well if the leaked documents are false and they are open and transparent where are the documents stating they aren’t losing billions upon billions of dollars chasing MTM down the toilet?
Easy way to refute claims is to have actually released evidence they are false. There’s been little to no information forthcoming from MTM.
If they are false, or faked, why are the AFP involved? Just issue a denial and move on. The LPA clowns just made it obvious they are real leaked NBN documents…and they keep reinforcing it almost daily.
Amazed you didn’t get the response “BS”
Put false in the title in quotes, that’ll bug her.
Thanks.
Renai LeMay 15/06/2016 at 3:17 pm
“…. just an email to yours truly from Ms Keisler. It states: ….”
And it just another attempt to deflect from the central facts that the NBN Co chair Mr Ziggy Switowski ignored advice from the Dept of the Prime Minister and a very senior political servant and released for publication an article which contravened the Caretaker Conventions enshrined in the principles of the Govt of Aust.
Switowski is an appointment by the Prime Minister of Australia. He either sacks Mr Switowski or he backs up and endorses such a blatant breach of Australian democratic principles.
Your call Prime Minister.
Oh and the pathetic attempts by the NBN Co media dept to defend such actions? Take heart – you may be used as text book examples in future Corp Media relations taught at Unis in the future.
Apparently ZDNet got the same “statement” from her.
The real question is, has she gone rogue on this, or is it an actual nbn™ sanctioned thing?
Renai LeMay 15/06/2016 at 3:17 pm
There is no media release — just an email to yours truly from Ms Keisler. It states:
Thanks for the response Renai, but I suspect that is only a small part of the reply. and I suspect that the qualifier ‘in part’ should have been included.
There is no preamble, no link to the citation, and no conclusion.
Is there any chance you can reveal the full text of the correspondence?
(And I’ll email you to ensure you are aware of the post/request. )
Regards.
It was a “media release”, just not a conventional one, and not listed on their website as such, but a lot of media companies got it:
https://goo.gl/1HRita
Just shows how dodgy these guys really are.
Continuity with change. lol
Stupid is as stupid does- Forrest Gump
Well that’s easy to fix. Independent group to come in and determine if in fact the original issue that he was “defending against” was true or not.
A Royal Commission aught to cover it. :p
It just highlights their incompetence and that the documents are in fact genuine.
What a pack of incompetent clowns we have running this corrupt circus…
doing everything possible to hold us all back. Class action.
The trouble is that these “partisan claims” they are defending against are their own documents.
After responding to leaks via an op-ed piece and found to be in breach of conventions and official guidance, they resort to needing to defend an op-ed piece.
Stay classy NBN.
Between calling the police, writing op-eds, defending op-eds, I wonder whether they will find time to build an internet connection.
How can they be found to have breached the conventions, and then go on to release a NEW media release which says it was justified…? I mean, isnt this just Mk2 of the original article, since you cannot read this second release in isolation of the first?
“The NBN Company has defended the actions of its chair Ziggy Switkowski in breaching the Caretaker Conventions, claiming that the executive’s hand was forced by the need to defend the company’s reputation.”
1. nbn is a GBE, it has no reputation to uphold.
2. It was still a breach of the Caretaker Conventions. Defending it doesn’t change this fact.
I’m sure if the staff working on behalf of the AUSTRALIAN POPULATION truly has a problem with false accusations, they would be in support of a Royal Commission to get to the bottom of it.
https://filmfork-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/malkovich_malkovich.jpg
“Commission commission? Commission.”
Ironic that the raid cooked up by the NBNCo and the AFP to discredit whistleblowers has ended up giving more scrutiny of their failed NBN and incompetence than anything the Labor Party or others might have thrown at them
Exactly, thanks Ziggy
Sorry Renai, but didn’t nbn (TM) spend umpteen millions of dollars to change their name from NBN Co?
Yet all the media outlets (including delimiter) haven’t seemed to get the message. Maybe they need to spend umpteen millions to change it back?
Ziggy, the fool who keeps on giving! lol
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Now to watch the foolish trolls defend that which is indefensible. Ha ha ha ha! munches on the popcorn!
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston Churchill
If the documents are false, why then spend untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to track down the whistleblowers? A simple rebuttal of the documents in Senate Estimates would have been enough…but then the rebuttal must be true or there would be legal consequences for misleading the Senate…They’ve caught themselves in a logic trap, and thought that breaching Caretaker Conventions, against the government’s own advice, would somehow distract from the nub of the matter, are the documents true or not? Their actions point out the the obvious and affirmative answer.
exactly. how can you report documents as being “stolen” to the AFP unless whats being reported matches your actual document content.
if the document contents are not authentic then perhaps the AFP should charge NBNco with lodging a false report or wasting police time?
The AFP wouldn’t do that anyway, the AFP is essentially the militant arm of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Meanwhile its costing the Tax Payer $50k + a Day to have staff engaged in this otherwise Tax payer funded political warfare on all sides. Hindsight is going to be shameful… oh well it will give the kids something to reference in their university assignments
Only if they can pay $100k once the Libs get back in…
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