Disclosure is the key
Terry McCrann
February 14, 2010
JEFF Kennett
still
doesn't get it. To play around with the famous Great Gatsby quote:
premiers
ARE different from you and me.
The leader of the government can no more play around at their
pleasure
punting the sharemarket, than they can continue to run a business. If he or she wants to have the freedom to keep doing either, that's
entirely their choice - their choice, to not be premier. And it's more than a bit rich to accuse the media of invading Felicity's privacy by focusing on Kennett family investments in her name. Not when, by his own admission, it is he, Jeff, who's really been
doing the
investing, and has been putting the shares in her name. Mr Kennett's the one who has
been
invading her privacy by dragging her name into his business.
He left no doubt that it was entirely down to him that $39,000 was
invested
in the Guangdong float - with the shares going into Felicity's name, presumably for tax
purposes. Nothing wrong with that - couples do it all the time. But when it is
premier and wife, it also pushes the envelope on the parliamentary
disclosure obligations.
At its simplest, if the investment is really his, if formally
registered in
his wife's name, shouldn't he disclose it?
It's certainly a more vexed issue when the spouse - whether male or
female
- genuinely has their own separate investment portfolio. But even in that circumstance - which Mr Kennett
is not claiming - disclosure is probably better to avoid any
suggestion of conflict of
interest. Which is exactly the issue raised by the disclosure of the latest Kennett family investment - in
technology
group Amskan.
Here we have the non-Jeff Kennetts investing in a company which is
hoping
to secure its corporate future by providing an important element in
the
$1.7 billion Melbourne City Link project. With the same company - and its shareholders, including the non-Jeff
Kennetts - on the verge of being bailed out of financial trouble by a
recently privatised Victorian business in which the State Government
still
has a major stake. Mr Kennett argued there was
no
obligation to disclose the Guangdong investment because that company
had no
business in or with Victoria.
His own argument would seem to oblige disclosure of "Felicity's" investment in Amskan.
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