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Former Forestry SA chief fined

Adrian Hatch

Adrian Hatch

The pursuit of a government bureaucrat who did not seek approval for offsetting a small mistake in a sales contract led to a “good deal of public time and resources” being used as part of an anticorruption investigation, a South Australian judge has said. Source: ABC News

Former Forestry SA chief executive Adrian Hatch, 58, has been fined $4800 for dishonestly performing public duties. He was due to stand trial in the District Court at Mount Gambier for abuse of public office, but pleaded guilty to a downgraded charge.

The court heard the offending related to a small grant Forestry SA had agreed to pay a sawmill as a subsidy for an equipment upgrade.

When Forestry SA sold a plantation in the south east of the state to a private company, the small contract was not included in the thousands, which were transferred under the deal.

Hatch later sought to make up for the error by giving the sawmill an equivalent discount on logs purchased.

The court heard the plantation sale meant the profit was rightfully the private company’s and should have been notified and approved.

Judge Sydney Tilmouth said it was clear Hatch would not have gained any personal benefit and his “motivation was one of convenience”, but the offending damaged the forestry organisation’s reputation and led to an expensive Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation.

“To outward appearances, you foolishly and rather impulsively dealt with the matter with this way in the hope and expectation it would go unnoticed,” he said. “That proved to be far from the case.

“As a consequence a good deal of public time and resources were no doubt spent investigating the matter and it has served to damage the reputation and standing of Forestry SA.”

Judge Tilmouth said the offending was “complex and involved” but, given the otherwise lawful nature of the contract Hatch was seeking to honour, it was “inexplicable” he did not seek approval.

“You allowed the cost of a [log] scanner upgrade that had gone unnoticed during the sale of the business to be impermissibly offset against discounts for the price of wood and which had the effect of creating a credit in the sum of just under $10,000,” the judge said.

“It is not at all immediately apparent why you allowed this to happen. Your counsel put that it occurred in the context of far more pressing issues, which was no doubt true enough as far as it goes.

“Nevertheless it is inexplicable why such a relatively minor and otherwise lawful transaction was not disclosed.”

Hatch was fined, a conviction recorded and he left court without commenting.