Icac: Eric Roozendaal denies intervention to benefit Nathan Tinkler
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Version 0 of 1. The former New South Wales treasurer Eric Roozendaal has denied he intervened in negotiations about a Newcastle industrial site to benefit the coal magnate Nathan Tinkler. The Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry in Sydney on Tuesday heard that Roozendaal had stopped negotiations between the state-owned Newcastle Ports Corporation and developers seeking to build a shipping-container terminal at a waterfront site in Mayfield, Newcastle. Halting the process allowed Roozendaal’s department to examine an alternative proposal by Buildev, the property developer part-owned by Tinkler, to build a coal terminal on the site that would have made the company tens of millions of dollars. Roozendaal’s intervention came despite advice from the Hunter Development Corporation that the Buildev proposal had serious probity issues. “I oppose most strongly the new proposed course of action,” an anti-corruption expert advised the HDC. “Were Buildev’s proposal to proceed I consider that course of action would be grossly unfair to the other respondents of the RFT [request for tender],” it said. “This alone, in my view, is sufficient to deny further consideration of this proposal.” Roozendaal’s ports policy adviser, the economist Sam Crosby, told the inquiry last week that he had advised the treasurer that the coal terminal proposal was a “dog’s breakfast”. “Like Lazarus, this thing just kept climbing back up out of the ground,” Crosby told Icac on Thursday. “The treasurer kept asking me to look at it again.” The inquiry heard on Tuesday that Roozendaal had also asked that a provision for easement be created that would have allowed Buildev to build a coal conveyor linking its land-locked Mayfield property to the water. He denied the suggestion by counsel assisting the commission, Geoffrey Watson SC, that Buildev would have been the only beneficiary of the easement. “You did everything you could, right or wrong, everything you could to get the Buildev deal up, didn’t you?” Watson asked the former treasurer. “No,” he replied, insisting the easement was designed to benefit “the people of NSW”. Days before the former treasurer intervened in the process, the disgraced former NSW Labor minister Joe Tripodi had been flown to Newcastle by helicopter to meet with Buildev executives. One of the executives noted after the meeting, “Joe [Tripodi] is going to get Eric [Roozendaal] to stop Anglo deal going to board this Thursday.” Roozendaal admitted his intervention had “quite possibility” come after talking to Tripodi, but insisted: “My direction [to halt the process] was not just on the basis of Mr Tripodi’s recommendation.” The Treasury’s advice was that the coal terminal proposal was unlikely to enhance competition at Newcastle ports, was “under-developed”, “unworkable” and “detrimental to industry”. The hearing continues. |