The Queensland premier,David Crisafulli, was “careless” in not declaring $200,000 in payments he made after a company he had run became insolvent, the state’s parliamentary ethics committee has found.
Crisafulli became sole director and chief executive of Southern Edge Training Solutions after losing his northQueenslandseat at the 2015 election.
The company had been financially stressed before he took over on 1 December 2015 and went into liquidation months after he left on 1 April 2016.
After being re-elected in 2017, Crisafulli made three payments as a result of a claim of insolvent trading by liquidators: $80,000 on 12 March 2020, $60,000 on 30 July 2020 and $60,000 on 19 July 2021.
He did not declare them on parliament’s register of interests, though parliamentary rulesrequired MPs to declare any liability worth over a threshold of $19,000 at the time. From October 2020 onwards, the threshold for declaration was $19,399.
A report by the parliament’sethics committee, which is made up of three Labor and three Liberal National party MPs, was tabled on Friday.
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The committee ruled the premier was “careless in the discharge of his obligations as a member by not including the liability on the register of interests”.
But it found that “on balance, it did not have evidence to meet the threshold required to prove that the premier knowingly did not disclose the liability”. As a result, it found his non-disclosure was not a contempt of parliament.
Crisafulli argued to the committee that he did not have a liability because no claim had been litigated, and asked for the complaint to be dismissed.
But the committee determined that there was a liability as a result of an agreement “which created a legally binding obligation to settle a debt”.
It noted that he had not approached the clerk of the parliament for clarification of the rules.
“While I did receive legal counsel, in hindsight, it is clear to me I should have consulted with the clerk on this matter,” Crisafulli told the committee.
“If the committee decides I should have declared a liability, I can only apologise and assure the committee it was an honest mistake and by no means deliberate or knowing.”
On Friday, the premier said he had “acted in good faith”.
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“The report is very definitive. It has cleared me. There was no further actions,” he said.
Crisafulli did not answer a series of questions about how he made the $200,000 payments and whether anyone had assisted him.
“This was subject to this analysis, and I have met my obligations. And a bipartisan committee has shown that,” he said.
The deputy Labor leader, Cameron Dick, referred Crisafulli to the ethics committee on 22 October last year, four days before the state election.
On Friday, Dick said: “David Crisafulli has been saying over and over that he has complied with his obligations. Well, he did not, and that is in black and white in this report today.”
The report says that the payments did not create any conflict of interest or the perception of any on the part of the premier, and that assessing the matter was a “novel issue” involving “ambiguity in the definition of liability”.
Crisafulli was the subject of an earlier ethics inquiry, in April 2020, between the first and second payments. He was late to disclose interests as director and secretary of Revalot Pty Ltd. The committee “determined these failures were not undertaken knowingly”.
Southern Edge Training Solutions, which traded as SET Solutions, taught a range of training courses. Based in Melbourne, it went into voluntary liquidation on 30 June 2016. Crisafulli has repeatedly said he only joined the company after being assured that there would be an imminent capital injection to keep it afloat.
The committee recommended that no further action be taken.