Fiona Nash's chief of staff resigns amid food ratings controversy
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Version 0 of 1. The chief of staff to the assistant health minister, Fiona Nash, has resigned after being embroiled in allegations of a conflict of interest over links with a firm lobbying for the junk food industry. Nash issued a one-line statement on Friday saying she had accepted the resignation of Alastair Furnival “with regret” and thanking him for his service. She was forced to correct a statement to the Senate earlier in the week in which she asserted that Furnival had “no connection whatsoever” with the lobbying company Australian Public Affairs (APA). Nash later conceded Furnival, who controversially intervened to pull down a health star rating website, was a “shareholder in the lobbying firm owned by his wife, Tracey Cain”. APA has acted for Cadbury’s parent company, the snack food giant Mondelez, as well as the soft drink industry group the Australian Beverages Council. Furnival was once chairman of APA and chief economist for Cadbury, but Nash has insisted there is no conflict of interest because he “receives no income” from a “shareholding” in his wife’s lobbying firm and the firm has promised not to lobby her or the health minister, Peter Dutton. Guardian Australia has established he remains a director of one of the firms that makes up the APA partnership. In a separate statement, Furnival said he had resigned to avoid the “political distraction” of the “smear campaign” against him, but also insisted there had been no conflict of interest. “This afternoon I have tendered my resignation as chief of staff to the assistant minister for health,” he said. “I have done so with a clear conscience but with recognition that this political attack is a distraction from the important health issues being effectively addressed by this government. “I … appropriately managed potential conflicts. I resign in the knowledge that neither I, nor my wife, has acted improperly. I regret any embarrassment that may have been caused to the minister and especially to my wife, who has been dragged into this political smear campaign.” Cain, Furnival’s wife and APA owner, said in a statement on Wednesday that “since his resignation and appointment as a chief of staff with a commonwealth minister [Furnival] has drawn no salary, dividend or profit share from this company. “Following his appointment, the process began to transfer Alastair’s shareholding to me as his former co-director. Since last September, Australian Public Affairs has not made representations to either health minister, their offices, or the Health Department; and has made no representations to any other minister of the commonwealth in relation to the health portfolio.” The government’s “standards for ministerial staff” require that staff “divest themselves, or relinquish control, of interests in any private company or business and/or direct interest in any public company involved in the area of their ministers’ portfolio responsibilities”. APA is a partnership registered with NSW Fair Trading. NSW Fair Trading records show APA’s partners are three companies – APA Pty Ltd, Strategic Issues Management Pty Ltd and Centre for Litigation Communications Pty Ltd. Australian Securities and Investment Commission documents show that Furnival is a director of Strategic Issues Management along with Tracey Cain, who is also secretary. |