Before unlawfully
entering federal politics in 2004, Nationals MP for New England Barnaby
Joyce was an accountant in St. George, Queensland just 119 km up the
Barwon Highway from the extensive Norman cotton farming complex.
As a senator
for Queensland he was Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Infrastructure
and Water from 25.3.2010 to 14.9.2010 and Shadow Minister for Regional
Development, Local Government and Water from 14.9.2010 to 18.9.2013.
He became a
Cabinet Minister in the Abbott Coalition Government and Deputy Prime Minister of
Australia in the Turnbull Coalition Government.
From 21.9.2015
to 27.10.2017 and then from 6.12.2017 to
20.12.2017 he was also the federal Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources.
Lawfully
elected to the Australian Parliament for the first time in the 2017 New England
by-election, thereafter he has sat as a National Party backbencher.
Given what we
now know about Joyce’s attitude to control of water resources and his favouring
of the needs of irrigators over those of dryland farmers and the environment the
question must be asked – what did he know about this alleged $20 million fraud
and when did he know it?
The same question
also needs to be asked concerning current Minister for Agriculture and Water
Resources & Nationals MP for Maranoa David
Littleproud’s knowledge of this matter.
ABC
News, 9
January 2018:
Two senior figures in
Queensland cotton conglomerate Norman Farming have been arrested over an
alleged $20 million fraud involving federal funds earmarked for Murray-Darling
water savings.
Norman Farming CEO John
Norman, 43, and his chief financial officer Steve Evans, 53, surrendered
themselves at the Brisbane watch house Tuesday morning with their lawyers at
their sides.
The men appeared in the
Brisbane Magistrates Court Tuesday afternoon and were granted bail.
Police are alleging the
rural fraud operation involved the director of the company submitting
fraudulent claims, including falsified invoices related to six water-efficiency
projects on the southern border property near Goondiwindi, known as Healthy
Headwater projects.
Mr Evans will face
charges in relation to four of those projects.
Police said the
sophisticated fraud spanned seven years.
It has taken the rural
arm of the major and organised crime squad more than a year to conduct what
Detective Inspector Mick Dowie called, "a very protracted, very complex
investigation".
Inspector Dowie said
they had to trawl through thousands of documents and call in forensics
accountants because of the sheer scale of the activities.
"There has
obviously been a significant amount of documentation that's had to be analysed,
and the offences particularly relate to the modification of invoices from
contractors or service providers to the farming community," he said.
"We'll allege the
company contracted harvesters or machinery operators to prepare for farming.
"And [we'll allege]
those invoices were modified to show it was actually for earthworks related to
the improvement of water efficiency, modified to suit the needs of the claim,
and, we will allege, purely fabricated claims for use of machinery to fulfil
the needs of the claims."
Norman Farming, a large
cotton operation near Goondiwindi in Queensland's southern border region, was
raided last October as part of a major criminal investigation, after a long
covert operation.
At that time, the ABC's
Lateline program reported the agricultural conglomerate was on the market for
more than $100 million.
It also reported local
farmers' concerns the Healthy Headwaters scheme had failed because there was
never any checking of invoices by department officials.
According to Lateline,
the Federal Government was made aware of allegations Norman Farming was
diverting floodwaters in late 2016.
But the $154 million
Healthy Headwaters budget was being administered by Queensland's Department of
Natural Resources.
Inspector Dowie said in
the department's defence it did not have any power of compulsion like police.
"So they can't
force people to hand over documentation like we can, so they can compare
original against what is produced," he said…..
BACKGROUND
 |
| Excerpt from SA Murray Darling Basin Royal Commission Exhibit |
The
Guardian, 9
April 2018:
Fraud charges are
expected to be laid against one of Queensland’s biggest cotton irrigators, John
Norman, within a matter of weeks.
If the trial of the
owner-operator of Norman Farming, and former cotton
farmer of the year goes ahead, it is likely to draw attention to the
links between the irrigator’s family and that of the federal minister for
agriculture and water resources, David Littleproud.
If the charges are laid,
they will also throw the spotlight on the Queensland government’s failure
in administering a key plank of the $13bn Murray-Darling basin plan, how it
withheld critical information about the alleged crimes, and how it raises
queries as to whether it lied about its own investigation.
For the past 18 months,
an expanding team of undercover detectives, cybercrime experts and forensic
accountants have been investigating Norman’s business on the Queensland/New
South Wales border, an irrigated cotton aggregate stretching 45km north from
the McIntyre river.
The investigation has
focused on whether Norman Farming misused upwards of $25m in
Murray-Darling basin infrastructure funds that were supposed to make the
irrigator more efficient and deliver water back to the ailing river system
downstream.
The plan for the basin
is funded by the commonwealth and administered by state governments. But
allegations that the $150m Healthy Headwaters Water Use Efficiency
projects in Queensland, part of the MDB plan, lacked any genuinely independent
checks on projects, means it may have been left open to corruption.
“It’s been a
loosey-goosey slush fund helping irrigators get richer,” according to Chris
Lamey, a dry-land farmer who’s seeking compensation from Norman, his neighbour.
“It’s achieved the opposite of what was intended. There’s a lot of water not
getting into NSW now and it’s backed up in dams next door to me.”
Queensland’s covert
police investigation into Norman Farming went
public in October 2017, when dozens of major crime squad detectives holding
multiple subpoenas fanned out from Goondiwindi in early-morning high-speed
convoys, heading across the floodplain to the irrigator’s properties and
several of its contractors in and around the border river town.
The first person police
met at Norman’s main Kalanga property, according to a source close to the
investigation, was a teenage office worker who, when asked where the financial
records were kept, explained they had been cleared out only days before by
backpackers hired by her boss through a local publican. She took police to a
locked shipping container where they had been moved.....
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
17 July 2017:
Deputy Prime Minister
Barnaby Joyce has stoked the controversy over claims of water theft in NSW
aired by the ABC, dismissing the report as a ploy to strip more water off rural
communities.
The comments have
prompted the South Australian government to call for his removal from the post
of federal water minister.
Mr Joyce told a
gathering in a pub on Wednesday evening in the northern Victorian town of
Shepparton, that it was important the Nationals had taken control of the Murray
Darling Basin Plan.
"[We've got] $13
billion invested in it," Mr Joyce said, referring to the plan, according
to a recording by the ABC. "We've taken water and put it back into
agriculture [ministry] so we can look after you and make sure we don't have the
greenies running the show, basically sending you out the back door."
Mr Joyce took aim at
the Four Corners investigation broadcast this week that
identified apparent rorting by some irrigators of billions of litres in the
Barwon-Darling region of northern NSW.
The program stirred
national concern and prompted NSW water minister Niall Blair on
Wednesday to appoint a former head of the National Water Commission Ken
Matthews to conduct an independent probe of the claims.
Mr Joyce downplayed the
impact of the alleged water theft at a media conference in Canberra on
Wednesday - likening it cattle rustling - before dismissing the claims further
at the Shepparton gathering......
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