We hear a great deal about the supposed influence of American citizen Rupert Murdoch on the affairs of Adelaide. He owns the city’s only daily newspaper and the Messenger suburban chain as well.
But there’s another foreign publisher in Adelaide, the Spaniard Javier Moll. Moll’s Prensa Ibérica – The Iberian Press Publishing – has a score of titles with over a million readers in Spain and Portugal.
He made it big in 1984 when he acquired a ream of papers the Spanish Government previously owned and published (which would have been a bit like the Australian Government selling the ABC to Packer). Señor Moll had plans to enter the Australian market.
He spent much time and a small fortune looking to set up a daily newspaper in Adelaide to take on The Advertiser.
He purchased a landmark office tower at 29-31 Franklin St which he hoped to turn into the headquarters of his daily newspaper enterprise, eyed a huge industrial building in Adelaide’s west where he planned to print his daily paper, took an interest in a Barossa Valley vineyard, and bought the historic old Stock Exchange Building between Grenfell and Pirie Streets in the city.
When Moll’s daily newspaper plans folded, the Spaniard instead bought the street magazine Rip It Up and the Adelaide Review.
His ambitious dreams of extending the Review beyond 12 issues a year recently failed.
The lifestyle-orientated tabloid newspaper briefly tried to go fortnightly but this month reverted back to a monthly.
But Moll’s Stock Exchange building was being eyed off. Premier Mike Rann had an ambition to set up an antipodean version of London’s Royal Institution, a two century-old science institution, and Rann wanted it housed in the Stock Exchange Building.
He set up something called the Australian Science Media Centre, a non-profit organisation which aims to be the first port of call for journalists looking for science information and expertise for their stories, which he wants there as well.
Advertiser editor Melvin Mansell is on the Science Media Centre’s board of directors.
Then the Government did a deal. It bought the Stock Exchange Building from
Moll, and paid the newspaper magnate $3.8 million. The Government then sold a building it owned at 25 Franklin St – the Public Trustee building conveniently next to Moll’s commercial tower – to the publisher for $7.6 million.
The Public Trustee had tenants in its building, and it charged rent for the space.
The Trustee has now lost that income, and in fact has to pay rent to Mr Moll for a building it once owned. The auditor-general is investigating the process.
“The arrangements regarding the initiative involved … the Public Trustee, Attorney-
General’s Department and Crown Solicitor, Department for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and Building Management and the Department of Treasury and Finance,” the Auditor-General wrote in his last report to Parliament.
So why should there be an inquiry? Well, the sale never went to public tender. “It was a closed-door, secretly-negotiated deal between the Government and Mr Moll,” Liberal MLC Rob Lucas said this week.
“The Government bought one building from a company and sold another building to the same company, both off-market. There are very strict guidelines which bind the Government on these sorts of transactions. They must be adhered to.”
To find out more about how the Government had handled the combined $11 million taxpayer-funded deal, Mr Lucas instigated a Freedom of Information request.
“Attorney-General Michael Atkinson’s department has refused access under Freedom of Information laws to all 29 of 29 documents on the sale of the Public Trustee building and the related purchase of the Stock Exchange building,” Mr Lucas said.
“This is another example of the arrogance of the Rann Government and it raises important questions about what the Government is trying to hide on this complex deal.”
The Independent Weekly has a copy of the Attorney-General’s department’s written response.
“These documents disclose information concerning a decision of Cabinet,” it says.
“These documents were created as a direct consequence of a decision of Cabinet and are inextricably connected to a decision of Cabinet.” Mr Lucas smells Rattus rattus.
“Senior public servants have informed the Liberal Party that there are many questions unanswered about this deal which involved the Premier, Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure,” he told the Independent Weekly.
“The Rann Government and its officers claim that it is not in the ‘public interest’ to release any documents and that ‘as the information contained in the documents is not finalised it may be misleading and may lead to an inaccurate representation of the events that occurred’!”
The Statutory Authorities Review Committee on which Mr Lucas sits will next investigate the deal as part of its public inquiry into the Office of the Public Trustee.
The committee is an upper house committee. Mr Rann wants the upper house abolished.
In Labor’s Plan for Honesty in Government, released in 2002, Mr Rann said: “We will lift standards of honesty, accountability and transparency in Government.
“Secrecy can provide the cover behind which waste, wrong priorities, dishonesty and serious abuse of public office may occur.”
Mr Lucas’s FOI request sought a total of 288 documents from the Department of Premier and Cabinet on this deal. He had only partial access to or was completely denied almost 200 of them.
“A good Government does not fear scrutiny or openness,” Mr Rann’s party pledged in 2002.
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff
Twitter