Link to fox fabrication

AN employee within the state’s $40 million fox eradication program possibly fabricated evidence of the pest’s existence in Tasmania but a “conclusive finding” on the issue could not be made.

The Integrity Commission’s report stated it found “no direct evidence of fabrication or falsification of evidence” by any employee in the program.

Yet it suggested it was poss- ible a dog handler “fabricated or falsified evidence by placing fox scat into the landscape”.

“However, the strength of the available evidence is not sufficient to make a conclusive finding on this issue,” the report, delivered last week, said.

If the program employee had fabricated evidence “the motivation appears to be focused to the performance of his dog” rather than any financial benefit. The commission did a year-long investigation of the now defunct program on the back of a complaint from MLC Ivan Dean who alleged evidence was fabricated.

The commission’s report said the employee and his dog located the largest number of fox positive scats of anyone on the program. According to a program employee, “concerns about evidence collection by [the employee] was raised by a large number of staff”.

The commission heard the employee was barred from a scat room and the locks changed, after which he located no more fox positive scats.

According to the report, there were rumours among staff that the worker was importing fox scats from Victoria.

The program was legally obtaining fox scats from the same park for dog training.

The employee denied the claims.

The report found there were other explanations — such as contamination, accidental scat location and the North-West being a fox poo “hotspot” — which reduced “the strength of evidence against the workers and, in combination, provide some hypothesis of innocence”.

“There is no direct evidence that [the employee] fabricated or falsified scat evidence … there is, however, circumstantial evidence that suggests [the employee] may have fabricated or falsified such evidence,” it said.

“A cursory analysis of relevant documents showed no evidence or suggestion that [the employee] was financially motivated to fabricate evidence.

“If [he] did fabricate evidence, the motivation appears to be focused to the performance of his dog.”

In his reply to the commission, the worker said he felt the report was needed “but a lot of evidence could have been investigated better”.