2 May 2016
A Star News Group Publication
Budget train bonanza
Dragonic debut
Property liftout
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INSIDE
Monday, 2 May 2016
Student stars shine brightly HAILEYBURY Keysborough students will celebrate Australian theatre and music through a rollercoaster of love, loss and laughter. Year 10 to 12 students will explore five iconic Aussie plays in the two-hour stage show Under the Southern Stars. Audiences will see pieces of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, David Williamson’s The Club, Cosi by Louis Nowra and Michael Gow’s Away. Under the Southern Stars is on at 7.30pm from 4 to 7 May at the Aikman Hall Reverse Stage, Haileybury, 855 Springvale Road, Keysborough. Tickets are $15 concession and $20 from adults and available at www.trybooking. com/LFDS.
Hey big spenders At wholesale wine supplier Trembath and Taylor, where Mr Paul’s son Matthew is a partner, IBAC investigators seized documents relating to sales of Italian wine worth more than $25,000 to Chandler Park. They also found communications between Matthew Paul and Mr Napoli regarding the purchase, for former DET acting secretary Jeff Rosewarne, and requests from Mr Napoli that his personal details be removed from the wine company’s computer system. Mr Paul suggested in evidence that he would not have co-operated with Mr Rosewarne had he known the true nature of another transaction in relation to office furniture for Rosewarne’s home.
“A difficulty with this evidence is that Mr Paul facilitated the creation of a false internal document trail, which on any reading suggested substantial printing had been done for the school by Premier Office National, something Mr Paul must have known at the time was untrue,” the report said. Department records showed that both Mr Paul and the school’s business manager Mary Hannett had numerous trips overseas paid for with school funds, some paid from Mr Napoli’s banker school money. Ms Hannett gave evidence that about $6000 was taken from the Chandler Park account where she held the banker school funds to cover the cost of overseas trips.
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This included about $1900 for flights to attend a conference in the United States, which she said Mr Napoli had suggested she attend. There was also evidence that Mr Paul paid bonuses to Ms Hannett, but he said the “special payments” were not in relation to banker school activities but for the work involved with a school merger. Mr Paul told the investigation that he never received or requested any direct benefits from banker school activities. Tony Bryant, principal at Silverton Primary School in Noble Park North, also gave evidence during public examinations from 27 April to 30 June last year.
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CHANDLER Park Primary was the biggest of the infamous ‘banker schools’, according to a report on Education Department corruption. The Keysborough school’s principal Peter Paul gave evidence to Operation Ord, which investigated millions of dollars’ worth of suspicious transactions that could now attract criminal proceedings via the Office of Public Prosecutions. The Independent Broad-based Anticorruption Commission (IBAC) tabled a report to State Parliament on the operation’s findings and six recommendations on Friday 29 April. Operation Ord started in 2013 and focused on the use of ‘banker schools’
between 2007 and 2014, specifically investigating claims that senior Education Department officials corruptly misappropriated funds through these schools. It was alleged they co-ordinated false and inflated invoices for goods and services not delivered or not related to DET activities, and arranged payment of inappropriate expenses such as excessive hospitality, travel and personal items. The report said that Chandler Park was “of particular interest” because it paid significantly more invoices at the request of former Education Department finance executive Nino Napoli - both in number and value - than any other school.
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By CASEY NEILL