Mullighan refuses to sack Renewal SA chair
The minister responsible for the state’s Urban Renewal Authority says he will not seek the resignation of its presiding board member despite revelations she told a former colleague who disclosed a suspicious $1 million payment that such things “get blown up”.
Renewal SA board member and former Victorian education minister Bronwyn Pike arrives at Melbourne's Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission hearing this week. Photo: Tracey Nearmy, AAP.
Housing and Urban Development Minister Stephen Mullighan was questioned yesterday in parliament about the continuing tenure of Bronwyn Pike at the Renewal SA board’s helm, after she copped heavy criticism this week in a hearing of Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission.
Fairfax reported yesterday that a secret phone recording obtained by the Commission revealed Pike – a former Victorian Education minister and Labor MP – discussing an “on the quiet” payment to an IT contractor with her then-departmental deputy secretary Darrell Fraser.
When told of the payment, Pike reportedly responded: “But you know how those things get blown up.”
The payment related to a failed online learning management system, Ultranet, developed for Pike’s Education Department to provide services to students, parents and teachers in government schools. It was built by IT firm CSG and phased into schools between 2006 and 2010. But following a damning audit it was abandoned at the end of 2013. Pike had already resigned from the parliament in 2012, and was subsequently appointed to the Renewal SA board.
She was a key figure in the agency’s disastrous Gillman land saga, with last year’s scathing ICAC assessment revealing she was questioned about reports she “had told two persons that in November 2013 she had been telephoned by [then-Minister Tom Koutsantonis], who told her to get the transaction across the line otherwise it would cost her her job as Chair”.
“Ms Pike denied that she had said that to anyone and denied that a telephone conversation occurred in which Minister Koutsantonis said those things,” Bruce Lander’s report concluded.
“I treated her denial as I would if a witness denied a matter relating to credit in a court.”
As InDaily reported yesterday, Pike endured a torrid day before the Victorian anti-corruption commission this week, claiming she didn’t act on allegations of corruption linked to the Ultranet tender process because it wasn’t her job to do so.
“I didn’t know who all the tenderers were because as a minister it’s not my job to know those things,” Pike told the hearing.
“The minister is very hands off and has the responsibility of setting policy.”
Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Vickie Chapman asked Mullighan if he would “now immediately ask Ms Pike to stand aside as chair of Renewal SA” in light of her evidence.
But Mullighan insisted “Ms Pike was called to appear before the Independent, Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission to assist with their investigation – not on the basis that she was a person being investigated”.
“I am also advised that there has been no suggestion or allegation of criminal or corrupt conduct by Ms Pike,” he told parliament.
“In the absence of an allegation of corrupt or criminal conduct by Ms Pike, I’m interested to understand the basis on which the deputy leader suggests she immediately be sacked?”
Chapman interjected: “It’s only a multi-million dollar tender business.”
The renewed spotlight is unwelcome after a succession of scandals for the state agency, with revelations in InDaily yesterday that a contract relating to the multi-million dollar Tonsley development had been “lost”.
