Labor kept quiet about another $1.4 billion NBN blowout

[nero_bolt]

Labor LIES

Labor knew its NBN plans were blowing out - again - by up to $1.4 billion but kept the news secret:

A CABINET briefing document obtained by The Weekend Australian confirms the Rudd government was aware of significant risks to the National Broadband Network rollout and that delays would strip $1.4 billion in revenues throughout the election campaign.

The summary of a cabinet submission by then communications minister Anthony Albanese for the meeting scheduled for July 22 ... [said:] “Given existing delays and the emerging industrial issues, we consider the rollout forecasts are questionable...”

Mr Albanese was pressed during the election campaign on his knowledge of this corporate plan, notably in a debate on ABC’s Lateline program on August 12…

Lateline host Emma Alberici...(:) “Have you got a date for receiving it?”

“We have not received—well, that’s up to the board, but we have not received the final business plan,” said Mr Albanese.

What a disaster. The politicians responsible should be hounded out of office. Yet one is now Labor’s defence spokesman

[lakeland27]

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@windrake wrote:

Turnbull is no longer the Darling

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 you'll grow to love him . his credibility is totally shot now so he ought to fit right in

[windrake]

Turnbull was the darling of the lefties on here but now he's doing the job that Conroy couldn't do the left are not so happy with their darling boy now.

[lakeland27]

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@windrake wrote:

Turnbull was the darling of the lefties on here but now he's doing the job that Conroy couldn't do the left are not so happy with their darling boy now.

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 he wasn't my golden boy, i knew he was a crooked ex-banker, i read the HIH inquiry report. did you ?

[freakiness]

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@lakeland27 wrote:

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@windrake wrote:

Turnbull was the darling of the lefties on here but now he's doing the job that Conroy couldn't do the left are not so happy with their darling boy now.

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 he wasn't my golden boy, i knew he was a crooked ex-banker, i read the HIH inquiry report. did you ?

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It's rather delusion to claim Turnbull is or was the darling of the left.  Right looney accusation for sure.

[monman12]

LL: "i knew he was a crooked ex-banker, i read the HIH inquiry report. did you ?"

LL your outrageous comments apropos Turnbull display  not only a myopic (incorrect) view of history, but a complete lack of knowledge regarding tort law with specific reference to defamation.

LL ".....  i read the HIH inquiry report. did you ?....." Somehow I doubt you have LL, so here is the reference:
http://www.hihroyalcom.gov.au/finalreport/index.htm

Or try this        http://www.hihroyalcom.gov.au/finalreport/Front%20Matter,%20critical%20assessment%20and%20summary.HT...

In May 2002, Turnbull appeared before the HIH Insurance royal commission and was questioned on Goldman Sachs' involvement on the possible privatisation of one of the acquisitions of the collapsed insurance company. The Royal Commissioner's Report made no adverse findings against him.

" In his days as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, Mr Turnbull was an advisor to FAI Insurance, which HIH bought at an inflated price, contributing to HIH's collapse. He was questioned for four days in 2002 at the HIH Royal Commission, before Commissioner Neville Owen cleared him of having of any part in the collapse"

nɥºɾ

[lakeland27]

i knew that would lure you out

no 'adverse findings ' = no definitive proof.  these bent corporate bankers are good at covering tracks aren't they .

 If he were a labor politician we'd be on the fifth inquiry by now, and his name would be mud (well more than it is now)

[lakeland27]

Tony McGrath, the liquidator of defunct insurer HIH, named Mr Turnbull and his assistant Russel Pillemer in a $450 million civil action filed in 2004, before Mr Turnbull entered parliament as the member for Wentworth.

The action, which Mr Turnbull has consistently dismissed as "seeking to revisit matters rejected by the HIH Royal Commission", has been grinding slowly through directions hearings in the NSW Supreme Court, and on current estimates will start being heard by judge Patricia Bergin in February 2010.

A move by two of the other eight defendants to have the action struck out was rejected last year by judge Clifford Einstein.

The action essentially alleges that the accounts of Rodney Adler's FAI Insurance were significantly improved in June 1998 by the use of a product called financial reinsurance, adding more than $50 million to FAI's bottom line profit figure, shortly before HIH Insurance chief executive Ray Williams made a $300million bid for FAI based on those inflated numbers.

Mr Turnbull had no role in that deception -- there are reinsurance companies, executives and a broker who are alleged to have done that -- but he is alleged to have concealed from the FAI board of directors, with the chief executive, Mr Adler, the fact that Goldman Sachs Australia spent the first seven months of 1998 working with Mr Adler on a plan to buy out the other shareholders of FAI.

The action is seeking $300million plus accrued interest from all the defendants. Being a civil case, none of the nine defendants is facing jail nor a fine, but any finding by the court of improper behaviour by Mr Turnbull, or an admission of error by Goldman Sachs Australia, will be at the very least a negative for Mr Turnbull's political career.

He was in 1998 an investment banker and chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia, and it was Goldman that provided the FAI board and shareholders with advice once HIH made its bid on September 23, 1998.

Mr McGrath takes no issue with the advice provided to accept the bid. But his statement of claim alleges that the Part B statement (now called a target statement), put out jointly by FAI and Goldman Sachs Australia in late 1998, omitted a number of important pieces of information that the law demanded should be included in the document, including that Goldman Sachs had recently decided not to put any of its own money into FAI.

Mr Turnbull told Mr Adler of that decision in early September 1998, just before the HIH bid came along. HIH bid "sight unseen" for FAI after Mr Adler refused to allow HIH to look at the FAI books, whereas Goldman Sachs had spent 650 hours looking through FAI's books, apparently without the knowledge of most of the directors of FAI, before it decided not to invest.

A statement from Goldman in early 2003 to the HIH Royal Commission made it clear that if that information had been in the Part B statement, the HIH board would have read it and decided that, if Goldman Sachs had had a close look at FAI and walked away, then maybe it should have too.

That information "would have prompted the FAI directors to take steps effectively to sabotage the very generous and fully priced takeover offer from HIH and thereby severely disadvantage their own shareholders", the statement read.

It will be up to the court to decide, but it appears to have been a circumstance where Goldman Sachs had to choose between helping its client, FAI, and obeying corporate law by putting all its information into the takeover document. It chose the former.

[newstart2380]

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@lakeland27 wrote:

i knew that would lure you out

no 'adverse findings ' = no definitive proof.  these bent corporate bankers are good at covering tracks aren't they .

 If he were a labor politician we'd be on the fifth inquiry by now, and his name would be mud (well more than it is now)

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If he were a labor pollie (guilty or not) he would be on the floor with a knife kin his back LOL

[lakeland27]

Its a lot like the 'Gillard still under police investigation over AWU matter' bull**bleep** claim. because a claim was all it was, she was not 'still under investigation' but you believed it, and  John never spoke up . he does of course defend turnbull

[spotweldersfriend]

It all sounds a bit like Jarndyce v Jarndyce.