Singapore control and donations at Australian in 2001
By Stephen Mayne
January 29, 2008
This was sent to Crikey subscribers shortly after the Australand AGM on April 19, 2001.
Australand are a big property developer which turns over almost $1 billion a year after taking over Lang Walker's dodgy Walker Corporation a couple of years back.
Australand chairman Jim Service is keen to put the Walker dodginess behind him. When Crikey mentioned that Alan Jones and John Laws got discounted apartments in the Wooloomooloo finger wharf development as part of their cash for comment deals with Walker, he strongly denied they were continuing this practice:
"There is absolutely none (cash for comment deals) and as long as I am chairman of this company there never will be," Jimmy blustered.
But he wasn't quite so pure when I raised the issue of Paul Keating's call for developers to be banned from making political donations.
"I think Mr Keating's suggestion is absolutely outrageous," he blustered. "If you ban developers, who do you ban next? Should journalists be banned from making political donations?"
Earlier in the meeting jumping Jack Tilburn had put on one of his mildest and most sensible performances Crikey has ever seen. He mentioned that Australand gave about $80,000 in political donations in 1999 and was told this year's figure was down below $20,000, but it is still not being disclosed in the annual report.
We also had a bit of fun with one of our favourites, the old "gap in the CV". Australand director Stephen McMillan spent 17 years with Lend Lease but quit last year before being hired by Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Inc to work in their big property development arm CapitaLand which happens to be the largest shareholder in Australand with 63 per cent.
The Australand annual report mentioned his involvement in the Olympic Village project but omitted his Fox Studios role which was apparently the trigger for his departure. When we asked about this McMillan said: "I was a director of the Fox joint venture but I wasn't the chairman of the CEO so I was involved but I wasn't intimately involved."
Champion former Hawthorn full back and AFL board member Chris Langford was one of the project managers at Fox and he also departed the company when Lend Lease took its combined $150 million write-down. We suspect Langers probably got a nice payout because his took his wife and five kids off to Tuscany for a few months in the middle of last year's footy season which can't have endeared him to the rest of the AFL Commissioners.
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