Crikey

Whilst it would probably appear somewhat ungracious for News Ltd journalists to start asking impertinent questions about the Rudd family’s financial affairs given the PM-elect’s attendance at Matt Price’s funeral on Friday, there has been no such reticence on display at rival Fairfax Media.

The Weekend AFR’s Prince column, which is anonymous but widely known to be edited by investigative reporter Neil Chenoweth, put some very interesting facts into the public domain on Saturday, including the following:

• Therese Rein’s Ingeus group turned over $261 million in 2006-07, well up on the previous $170 million revenue figure which has been widely reported in the media, such as in this Lateline story from May.
• Of the $10 million pre-tax profit for 2006-07, only $4 million was generated in Australia.
• The sale of the Clements recruitment business settled last month and whilst the price was undisclosed, the buyer, Bluestone Personnel, raised $11.5 million in new loans from St George Bank.
• The Howard Government started terminating Ingeus contracts in its final months, triggering the closure of 16 offices and a $1.14 million redundancy bill within its YES division, which was bought for $9 million and still hasn’t been sold.

The intended sale of the Australian arm was announced in late May, after stories such as this one in the Herald Sun, but it appears there are some outstanding issues.

Crikey went where others fear to tread last Wednesday by calling for complete disclosure and it sparked a familiar angry response from readers the next day.

However, the Rudds may actually be the victims here. Kevin Rudd told Kerry O’Brien last Wednesday that the sale of Therese Rein’s domestic business has been “very difficult”.

So, rather than this being a story about Rudd family profits from the Howard Government, we might in fact be dealing with some financial losses due to vengeful or biased contracting procedures.

How the Rudd Government deals with the bureaucrats that made these decisions would be very interesting to know, especially when you consider that the Minister involved was Joe Hockey, Rudd’s Sunrise buddy who walked the Kokoda Trail with him last year.

Did John Howard issue a decree that the Government must stop enriching his opponent? Why were all these Ingeus contracts ended? Was it just related to the service and price? It really is time we had all the facts on the table.