Utopia questions
Like Jim Evans (Gaz 14/5), I commend the Gazette for staying on the Utopia case longer and more persistently than often happens with media interest.
Prompted by previous reports (Gaz 10/4/18), I also questioned (Utopia concerns, Gaz 17/4/18) Council’s refusal to disclose information that is not, or ought not to be, confidential.
This includes allegedly commercial-in-confidence information about Utopia Pet Lodge – a business that no longer exists. – and the name and nature of the ‘independent entity’, which could, if known, provide at least some assurance that council relied on reputable advice.
Even more concerning is that, according to the Gazette, the independent entity’s identity is not only mysterious, but ghostly too. This veil of secrecy invites suspicion and leads us to question the purpose.
Mr Evans rightly questions why council would commission, and pay for, a report that couldn’t be released publicly. Not even the terms of the so-called disclaimer allegedly preventing publication have been made public: how can they be confidential?
A commercial disclaimer is normally a unilateral assertion made by a supplier, in this case adviser/consultant, to protect themselves against adverse claims arising from matters beyond their control. If the disclaimer in this case was actually a non-disclosure agreement, council must have freely entered into it.
Whereas it would’ve been reasonable to agree not to disclose genuinely confidential commercial information used in due diligence discovery and business analysis, the blanket restriction claimed was never reasonable, certainly not beyond the time the sale was completed. It would always be in the public interest for the bottom-line advice relied on, and its source, to be disclosed.
The significance of the Utopia transaction now is not the soundness or otherwise of council’s decisions at the time, but the broader questions of governance that continuing secrecy surrounding them raise.
Such questions have resulted in ministerial intervention at South Gippsland Shire Council, which is facing imminent suspension or termination. John Hart, Warragul