Chapter 20: Reconciliation in the Wild

ICAC Investigations

Wednesday April 26^th – Friday May 5^th, 2000

We were getting ready to head down to the ICAC hearing room for our initial meeting with the CLID project investigation team; Mary Beth had some background material on WTM Consulting and our overall size and customer base, and Michelle had some printouts that she was going to show the investigators.

“I should give you a heads up on this, Will, as it indirectly involves Kaz Parsons,” Michelle said. “Or at least her ex-husband, and his company.”

“What?” I said, sounding surprised.

She explained how in analysing the CLID database to get an idea of transaction loads, she noticed a big increase in the number of transactions where a Crown Land parcel was transferred to a private company. This would often happen where the government no longer had a need for a piece of property, and it would be sold to a private company or individual.

“There are rules controlling how the sale is performed,” she said. “There’s a value and size threshold, if a parcel exceeds either limit, then it has to go through a public tendering process, and for very large, or very valuable parcels, there has to be ministerial sign off. Now, most sales in recent months have all been under those thresholds, and in several situations, the original parcel was split into two or more subdivisions, so it would not have to go to public tender. That struck me as a bit suspicious, there weren’t transactions like those earlier than two years ago. Now, all of these suspicious transactions were from the north-west region of the state, and all went to shell companies, and a month or two later, the land was sold to Ball Consolidated Transport Holdings, and the shell company wound up.”

“That does look a bit dubious,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not all,” she said. “Like on those late-night TV sales programs, ‘but wait, there’s more!’. When I went to try to see what has shown up in the last six months – remember, the database we have was a dump from back in February – there were NO transactions like that. Even the ones we picked up had been removed from the live database. I had Vic check the transaction logs, and they were all deleted less than two weeks ago.”

“Someone trying to cover their tracks?” I asked.

“Yes, but not all that successfully,” she said. “We took copies of the latest database and transaction files, so the evidence is preserved. But this doesn’t look good for Kaz’s ex.”

“Nor the people up in those Lands offices, either.” I said. “I’m sure that will be of great interest to the investigation team.”

“Anyway, I thought you should know, so you aren’t blindsided when I pass that information on to the investigators,” she said.

“Thanks for that, does Kaz know?”

“Only at a high level, I mentioned that we had uncovered something dubious where his company was involved. She will be at the meeting today, too.”

“Assuming she has no knowledge or involvement, I can’t see her being too upset,” I said. “Karma, I guess.”

We collected our papers, and walked down to the ICAC offices, arriving there with fifteen minutes to spare before the start of the hearing. Kaz was already there, waiting for us. After we had signed in, John Helms, Sandra Drake and another person came out to see us, and showed us into the hearing room. John introduced the third person, who was the hearing officer, Kathy Steen.

We took our seats in the hearing room, and Kathy introduced herself to us.

“Thank you for taking the time to come and speak with us today, firstly, I have to stress that none of you, nor your company is under any investigation, there’s not the slightest hint of suggestion that anything you have done in any of your dealings with the state is questionable. In fact, if more of the contractors that worked with the state were as upright and as professional as you, us here in ICAC would have far less work on our plates.

“The second thing that I want to stress is you are here voluntarily, because you aren’t subject to an investigation, and there’s been no subpoena issued forcing you to appear, you don’t have to answer anything, this isn’t a formal hearing, there’s no cross-examination, nothing that you say can be used against you. All you are doing is providing some background information to assist us in our investigations and give us an alternate source of technical information that we can use.”

“Maybe we can start by you telling us about your involvement with the CLID project, when you first became aware of it, and what your thoughts are,” John said.

“I guess the first involvement was the middle of 1995, we had just finished a big project setting up the State Government’s internet architecture,” I said. “There was a project to help to integrate all the disparate computer systems that the Department of Land and Water Conservation had, as part of the amalgamation of the Department of Lands and the Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission. That’s where we first heard about that application system, and I was struck by the amount of money they had already spent on it.

“My question was how that ever passed any sort of cost justification. We had been accustomed to working with commercial businesses, where they needed to show a return on investment within three or four years, at the outside. But at that stage, they had spent almost twenty million dollars, and I asked just how much revenue they got from the leases, in total, and how much extra would CLID bring in, or how much would they save. When I asked questions on return on investment, or cost justification, all I got was blank stares, as if no one had ever thought that was necessary.

“The other thing that I felt was strange was that some of the money was being paid for custom software development – not that software development is unusual in an IT contract – but this was being paid to the GIS software company, basically for them to enhance their existing commercial software product – which they would go on and sell to other customers as part of their product range. Any time when we have developed custom software, or enhancements to software for a customer, the customer had full ownership of that product. There have been some situations where we have developed a custom product as part of a contract – the Internet Appliance is a case in point – but we didn’t charge the total development cost to the client. I don’t believe that’s right, getting a customer to pay for the development of a product that you then go out and sell to other customers.”

“That’s something that we’ve already made a note of,” John said. “It’s certainly against Government contractual guidelines, if we pay for the development of a product, then we expect to get a full license to own the product, and also some contractual agreement that any revenue from further sales of that product is shared with the State.”

“Now, there’s another strange thing that we’ve discovered, too,” Michelle said. “When we started the Land Information System project, we got a full copy of the CLID database, so we could see how it had been designed, and so on. Now, following our last meeting, we’ve been looking at transaction volumes and other parts of the system to get some sizing ideas. One thing that we discovered was a dramatic increase in a particular type of land sale transaction, one where the value and size of the parcel were both below the threshold that would trigger a public tender for the sale. In some situations, a land parcel that would have triggered the tender process, by virtue of its value or area were somehow split into two or three smaller parcels to get under the limits. Not just that, but most of these sales were to shell companies, who then sold ownership of the block they acquired to one company, a Melbourne-based transport company, who then used this newly acquired land to set up a series of transhipment depots across localities in North-west New South Wales.

“Now, last week I wanted to see if that trend was continuing, since the data we have was a snapshot from back in February. Imagine my surprise when we did a query against the current production database, and not only were there no new transactions of that kind, but all of the previous transactions that we had in the February copy of the database had disappeared.”

“What?” Kathy exclaimed. “Are you telling me that someone there had deleted records from the system?”

“Exactly,” Michelle said. “One of our database experts was able to pull the transaction log records that showed when each entry was deleted from the main database, it was all done the week before last, by someone up in the Northwest Lands office. We can’t identify exactly who, but we’ve saved copies of the files showing what was done.”

“So, who was the final recipient of these land parcels?” Kathy asked.

“The company who all of those shell companies sold to, before they were would up is Ball Consolidated Transport, based in Melbourne,” Michelle said.

Kaz let out a gasp, and everyone looked at her.

“That’s a family company, which is owned by my ex-husband, Martin Ball,” she said. “I haven’t been in contact with him for several years, but his parents are major shareholders, and they are well-connected to the Victorian branch of the Liberal and National Parties. We’ve been divorced for quite some time, and I don’t see him anymore, but do you want me to excuse myself from this inquiry, so there’s no suggestion of a conflict of interest? If you believe it’s not appropriate for me to be involved, I can speak to Doug Jackson, and he can assign someone else to work with you.”

“There’s no need for that,” Kathy said, “not at this stage. If our investigations show that you are somehow tied up in it, then that will change. This goes without saying, but you – in fact none of us in this room – can divulge anything that is discussed or revealed in these discussions, they must remain strictly confidential.”

We all gave our assent and understanding, clearly things had taken a far more serious turn with the information that Michelle had uncovered. Clearly, that was one of the reasons why the CLID team didn’t want any enforced logging built into the system. We continued with the meeting, there were discussion about database triggers, methods of ensuring proper transaction logging, how we would approach access control and security in the application, and should the current project be scrapped, what options there would be for an alternative lease management system to be developed, and what some indicative costs and timeframes would be. Fortunately, I had that information at my fingertips, having prepared for just such questions. We wrapped up the meeting just before noon, Kathy thanked us for our time, and the work that we had done investigating the system. We told her we would keep the copies of the database showing both the strange transactions, and the subsequent copy where those transactions had been removed, and if they wanted copies to keep securely as evidence, we would make a copy for their custody.

“Well, I guess the shit has really hit the fan with your revelation, Michelle,” Mary Beth said. “I wonder how long it will take before Kathy starts to issue subpoenas to discover what other shady things have been going on in the Crown Lands area.”

“I think some people are about to get into some very hot water,” I said. “Let’s all keep our heads down; we don’t want to get caught in the crossfire. As it is, we will probably get the blame for their project getting cancelled.”

“All we can do is continue with our project as it was originally given to us,” Mary Beth said. “At least, until we hear officially otherwise, it’s business as usual, we have a job to do.”

Mary Beth headed back to our company office at St. Leonards, while Michelle and I went back to the project office in the State Office Block, stopping for lunch at the Piccadilly Centre on the way.

“Do you think that might cause problems for Kaz?” Michelle asked. “I hope it doesn’t, I would feel so terrible if my poking around got her implicated in anything.”

“I can’t see how it can,” I said. “She’s been divorced from Martin for several years, they don’t talk to each other, he’s cut off all contact with her. Personally, if he gets into deep legal trouble over this, then in my view, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, as they say.”

“I hope he, and the others involved in that scam, get punished,” Michelle said. “I bet there’s going to be some blowback to us from the Lands people, particularly when the CLID project gets suspended. What do you think the chances are of us being asked to replace the current system?”

“Well, those people on the CLID team have never liked us, even when we were on the DLWC network redesign project,” I said. “So, I can’t see anything changing, and it’s not my problem. I think we would have a pretty good chance of picking up the pieces when the existing project blows up; we have as good an understanding of the application requirements as anyone. We are a known quantity, with a proven reputation of delivering systems on time, on budget, so they could do worse. I expect to hear something not long after ICAC makes their first charges.”

“We have the first cut of a project plan for the redevelopment,” Michelle said. “I’ve been talking to Mary Beth about staff resources for it, too. But depending on how much they are prepared to pay, it’s likely to be a lucrative contract.”

“Amazing how these contracts just seem to come along and land in our laps,” I said. “I guess that’s the result of several years of hard work, establishing our reputation. Now, back to the office? That was a good lunch, I love their focaccias.”

We continued down Castlereagh Street until we reached the State Office Block. When I got to my desk there was a message for me, saying that Megan had called, and would have something to show me about possible furniture this evening. I tried calling her at her place, but there was no answer. I looked through my address book, but I didn’t have her mobile phone number, so it would have to wait until later; mind you, I would be having dinner with the two of them this evening. I kept myself busy through the afternoon, despite what was going on with ICAC and the CLID system, we still had the Land Information System project to deliver, and the access control system wouldn’t design itself.

Around 4:00, I decided that I had done about all I could do today, my brain was starting to fade, so I told Michelle I would be back in the morning, walked up to the station at Wynyard, and caught the train back to the apartment. I had time to have a shower to freshen up before driving across to Megan’s place. Just like the other week, as I was walking from my car to the front doon, Lori was arriving home, and we met at the door. She hugged me and gave me a sizzling kiss.

“Your timing was perfect, as usual, Will,” she said.

“We should arrange for me to pick you up somewhere in the city, so you don’t have to take the bus home,” I said. “How was your day, anyway?”

“Oh, not too bad, the usual stuff, working out what stories are worth covering in greater detail, what stuff we should let lie. It’s always a complicated decision, if I choose that a story isn’t worth pursuing, and then something blows up, then there are questions about our editorial decisions. Invariably, someone will say ‘you are trying to cover stuff up’, or that we show favouritism to one group or another. The fact is, with any media organization, there are limited resources, only so many journalists, only so many column inches, and not every story appears to be worthwhile covering. But if we don’t cover your particular interest, if some alleged scandal isn’t on the front page, then we are accused of being ‘part of the establishment and covering things up’. Or else, we get asked why we wasted time and newsprint on some inconsequential story. Heads you lose, tails they win. How about you, what was your day like? Weren’t you at some ICAC hearing about some corruption with some part of the government? You aren’t in any trouble, I hope? I’ve heard a little bit about ICAC, once they get the slightest suspicion of something...”

“Yeah, that was on this morning, and no, I’m not under any suspicion, neither is the company. I can’t give you any details, we’ve been sworn to secrecy, so not even a hint, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, I don’t expect you to divulge any confidential information or juicy rumours,” she said. “I guess if there’s something behind it, the stories will come out anyway.”

She unlocked the door and let me in; I followed her into the main living room where Megan was sitting.

“Hey, Will, I was just about to phone in the order for dinner,” Megan said. “You’re happy with the same order as we usually have? A thin crust super supreme? Get yourself a drink, you should know where things are by now.”

I went across to the fridge and poured myself a large glass of the home-made lemonade. I didn’t want to start on the wine as soon as I arrived, far better to pace myself if I was going to drive back home.

“Will, I visited a few antique and furniture stores today,” Megan said. “There was one place in Haberfield, on Parramatta Road, where I saw this lovely item – I have no idea what the proper name of it is, but it would be a combination coat rack / seat / mirror that we could have right next to the front door. I took a short video of it, and I put a hundred dollar holding deposit on it. If you like it, I’ll get it this weekend. Do you want to look at my video?”

“Sure, I didn’t know you had a video camera,” I said.

“It’s just a basic hand-held unit, it records to a small cassette tape. I’ve got it plugged into the TV, come and look at it.”

She had a small, hand-held video camera sitting on the coffee table, and connected to the TV via some component video cables. She pressed some buttons on the camera, and the image appeared on the TV screen. She was recording what I believed was called either a hall stand or hall tree – similar to the one I had at Banksia Lodge. This one was a rich honey colour and looked to be in excellent condition. The seat of the bench could be lifted up, allowing things to be stored within the seat. Probably made from cedar over a hundred years ago, from the appearance. That material was almost impossible to get these days, all of the cedar forests on the north coast had been logged out decades ago.

“That looks pretty good, how much are they asking for it?” I asked.

“Eight hundred, including delivery,” she said. “What do you think? I’ve got them holding it for me; I thought we could go and look at it on Saturday morning, and if you like it, I’ll pay the balance.”

“I like it, we can look on Saturday, that would be good.”

“They also had lots of other stuff, a sideboard we could consider for the dining room, lights – both floor standing, and some we could put on side tables. The video shows some of the things I saw. After that, I went a bit further up Parramatta Road, there’s a huge furniture store there, Brescia Furniture. They had some living room furniture that we might want to consider, too.”

“Sounds like we should look there on Saturday, too; maybe I should get around here early in the morning, and we can look around before that evening’s gig starts.”

“Why don’t you sleep here after the gig on Friday night, and when we get up, we can leave from here,” Lori said. “That will save you from having to drive back to St Leonards late at night.”

“That sounds like a plan,” I said. “As long as that’s fine with you, Megan.”

“That’s fine by me,” Megan said. “I could make home fries for you, Will; I know you like them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I’ll make sure I have a change of clothes and my toilet bag with me Friday night. Now, do you want me to go and pick up our pizza?”

“We can go together, Will,” Megan said. “Lori will probably want to get changed, so once you’ve done that, Lori, can you set the table for us? We’ll be back with the food in a few minutes.”

Megan and I headed out to my car, to drive the short distance to the Lilyfield pizza place and pick up our dinner.

“Are you sure you really like that hall stand?” she asked. “I don’t want you to feel obliged to have it in your place, just because I like it.”

“No, I think it looks great, I had something very similar in my house in Lane Cove,” I said. “If it looks as good in real life as it did on your video, we should get it, it will look really good in the entranceway.”

“That’s what I thought; now I don’t know how often we will come in the front door as opposed to the rear entrance from the garage, but should we have guests over, it would be good for that,” she said. “Here am I, already telling you what you should be doing with your house! I’m jumping the gun, aren’t I?”

“Not at all; and remember, it will be OUR house, you, Lori and me, it’s not MY house,” I said. “You don’t have to pay for it, I’m happy to buy that hall stand.”

“No, Will, I WANT to buy it for us,” she said. “Since you just said that it’s our house, I want to contribute in any way that I can. Please, let me buy it for us.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want, I’m fine with that. I’m interested in seeing what else that place has that we might need. I suspect we are more likely to find what we want in an antique store than a normal mass-produced furniture place. It looked like there were some interesting table lamps we could pick up, I think ones with either that ‘oiled bronze’ look, or wooden stands will suit the style of the room.”

By now we had arrived at the pizzeria, we collected our meal, and got back in the car to drive back to Megan’s place.

“Damn, that pizza smells so good!” I said. “It’s making me drive faster, so we can get back sooner and eat it.”

“There’s another favour I want to ask you, Will,” Megan said. “I’m just starting to work on a new project, it’s a show featuring songs of some ‘girl groups’ of the early 1960s, and the music of Phil Spector, you know that ‘Wall of Sound’.”

“Sounds interesting, didn’t you and I do one of those back when we first played at the Mirage, ‘Da Do Run Run’? That was a shitload of fun, we would dance on the stage during the instrumental break. There are lots of good songs that fall into that category, how do you want me to help?”

“One of the people I worked with producing musicals back in the States came up with the idea, and she’s working on it there. She emailed me some MIDI files of the music, and I’m wondering if you can show me how to play them through your system.”

“Sure, I can do that,” I said. “You said your friend emailed the files to you, did you scan them for viruses, or anything like that?”

“No, I don’t know how to do that,” she said. “Is it likely to cause a problem? I’m not really all that computer savvy, I’ll leave all that stuff to you.”

“Once we are living together, I will set things up to make sure all of our computers are protected,” I said. “It’s not likely to cause a problem in this situation, but once we have things set up, we have email filters that automatically scan for nasty stuff, filter it out. There’s work being done on those systems to automatically quarantine suspicious emails, or junk emails, stuff like that. But getting a MIDI file or two from a trusted friend should be fine.”

“I know the basics of how MIDI works,” she said. “But I’ve seen how you have things set up to provide a full backing to your playing or singing, how you can change the instruments on any particular track, that’s something I don’t know about, and I would love to learn.”

“Sure, no worries, Megan. We can do that after tonight’s episode of ‘Popstars’. It’s the final one, isn’t it?”

“Yes, thank God,” she replied. “I don’t think I’ll be putting my time on that show on my resume. I mean, the money was good, but, honestly, Will, I don’t know how I didn’t slap some sense into those young girls. Were we ever that clueless and arrogant at the same time when we were that age?”

“Hell no! But we had people like George Young, Harry Vanda, Glenn Wheatley, and others who would have slapped some sense into us,” I said. “We were so lucky to be able to learn from them, it was like sitting at the feet of the gods, and trying to learn everything they would tell us.”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to pass what I know onto these kids, but they think they know everything, I’m seen as an old fossil, way out of touch with current music trends,” she said. “When you turned up that afternoon, and talked to them, and showed them just what it meant to be a true professional musician, that had a big effect on them.”

“Well, it’s nice to know that I can still impart some level of knowledge onto the younger generation,” I said.

“You still have the touch, Will,” Megan said. “I guess all those years lecturing, you know how to teach people.”

We had arrived back at Megan’s place, and we hurried inside with the pizza. Lori had set out some plates on the table, and was just emerging from her bedroom, having changed out of her business clothes. Megan put the pizza box on the table, I grabbed my drink, and we all sat down to eat.

“I wonder how the final show will be,” Lori asked. “I guess there will be more of those girls strutting their bodies around, I wondered when I watched last time, just how much more of their tits could they show without it being too indecent for prime-time TV?”

“You wouldn’t believe what happened in one of the rehearsals the other day,” Megan replied. “That little sexpot, Sophie, was dancing around, wearing a micro-tank top, when both of her tits popped out. Of course, she laughed, tried to pretend it was an ‘accident’. Yeah, nah, she intended that to happen. So, for the actual recording, they used special tape to keep her tits under control. All the male crew were tripping over their tongues, as if they hadn’t seen a breast before in their life!”

“Some guys go crazy at the merest glimpse of a breast,” I said. “And the bigger they are, the better.”

You’ve never been like that, Will,” Lori said. “Something that I was always grateful about, us Earle girls were never overly endowed in the boob department!”

“Yeah, unlike some other guys, to me boob size wasn’t all that important,” I said.

“You never wanted to play with those huge tits of ... what was her name ... David Parsons went out with her ... Gina? She had huge tits!” Megan said.

“She made no attempt at hiding them,” I said. “A couple of times Cathy, David, Gina, and I would go to the beach together. She would always be topless, and more often than not, completely naked. Several times, she would flash her pussy at me, VERY explicitly, and suggest I could sample her pussy anytime I wanted. Talk about cheap and skanky.”

“Ugh!” Megan exclaimed. “That’s pretty tacky, and I assume Cathy was there? Gina didn’t do that in front of Cathy?”

“No, she and David had gone swimming, snorkelling, at the Warriewood blowhole, and Gina and I were lying out in the sun on the rocks. But she was pretty skanky, although David couldn’t see past the huge tits!”

“Her tits were so huge no one could see past them,” Lori said. “Wasn’t her mother the one we all nicknamed ‘melons’? I bet they have sagged right down to her thighs by now!”

“I shouldn’t talk, Lori, my tits aren’t as perky as they were back when we were at high school,” Megan said. “At least yours are still as firm and nice as they always have been!”

“That’s because they are tiny, there’s not enough weight in them for gravity to do anything to them,” Lori replied. “I’ve always envied your lovely boobs, Megan.”

“Maybe Will could evaluate who of us has boobs that have survived the best,” Megan suggested. “Surely, you can remember what our tits were like, back when we were last living together, and determine whose breasts are still as nice as they were then.”

“Oh no, I’m not making that mistake,” I said. “I’m not going to try to compare you two, rate who has the nicer tits. That’s just crazy, as I recall, you both had very nice breasts, and I’m not going to try to cause problems saying whose tits I prefer. Nothing good can come from that!”

“Very diplomatically answered, Will,” Lori said. “At least you’ll get to make a determination, even if you keep it to yourself.”

“Well, putting breasts to one side, that pizza was excellent, how about I clear the table, and we can watch the final episode of ‘Popstars’,” I suggested.

The show was as bad as I had feared, I was astounded that these were the best five singers out of the thousands who had applied for the show. At least it had provided us with some entertainment, and Megan would continue to work with the winners – called ‘Bardot’ – to help them come out with their first single. Megan then suggested that we go up to the studio, so I could show her how to use my MIDI setup for her 60’s Female Group show.

I powered on the computer I used for my MIDI work, plus my keyboard, sound generator, and amp. I inserted the floppy disk with the files that Megan had downloaded from the email she received into my computer, and ran a quick virus check on it – fortunately it was clean, as I had expected. I then started my MIDI workstation software and loaded the first file – ‘Then I Kissed Her’.