KPMG top guns will play a key role in cleaning up Ipswich

AS the State Government moves to clean up Ipswich after the city council was disbanded, staff from one corporate giant will play a key role.

Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe.

CURRENT and former KPMG top guns in Brisbane will play a key role in cleaning up Ipswich after the city council was disbanded.

Is it just one more sign of a pretty cozy relationship between the bean counting giant and the state’s Labor government?

Local Government Minister Sterling Hinchliffe announced this week that former KPMG Queensland chairman Bob Jones and one of the firm’s current partners, Stan Gallo, are on the team.

They are part of a five-person management committee assisting interim administrator Greg Chemello, an Economic Develop Queensland boss who has 19 months to drain the Ipswich swamp.

A spin doctor for Hinchliffe told City Beat yesterday that the group was sourced from “a wide-ranging potential candidate pool’’.

That may be so but we’d love to know how many candidates from other accounting heavyweights, such as EY, PwC and Deloitte, made the short list for consideration.

After all, KPMG has financially backed the Queensland Labor Party for years, including making a $30,943 donation in 2015-16.

The firm has sponsored budget breakfasts and last year pocketed more than $165,000 from the State Government to produce a report on whether the public servant hiring-spree was actually improving frontline services.

KPMG was also among the 27 firms which rocked up to a mass cash-for-access event last August with all Cabinet ministers. Tickets were $5500 a pop.

Did we mention that ALP heavyweight Mike Kaiser has been a director in KPMG’s Brisbane outpost since mid-2015 and just became a partner in January this year?

Kaiser, of course, is a former pollie who resigned after a 1980s branch stacking scandal but went on to become an ALP assistant national secretary and chief of staff to former Premier Anna Bligh.

SALARY TAKES FLIGHT

FLIGHT Centre boss Graham “Skroo’’ Turner’s pay packet more than doubled to $1.41 million last year thanks to a big spike in base salary and a nearly $300,000 long service leave windfall.

Not that Skroo really needs the dough.

He still controls 15 per cent of the stock in the Brisbane-based group, which reported record results yesterday, including a 13.9 per cent lift in profit to $262.9 million.

But investors weren’t amused, sending the share price down more than 8 per cent to close at $61.68.

That shaved $82 million off Skroo’s fortune on paper, leaving him with just $937 million. Poor guy.

CANBERRA MADNESS

THE gang at the Queensland Tourism Industry Council has changed their office sweep from The Bachelor to the Prime Minister.

“Less predictable and more crazy antics going on,’’ boss Daniel Gschwind tweeted yesterday.

Meanwhile, MP Milton Dick posted a picture of his new cufflinks, shaped like butcher knives.

“Thought today was an appropriate day to give them a run,’’ he said.