Some songs you shouldn’t sing on camera when you’re deep in legal issues – The Clash classic “I fought the law” for a start. Nobody appears to have told Bruce Lehrmann that, though.
Lehrmann spent much of Monday getting grilled on the contents of his texts and emails to friends around the time he learned he had been accused of rape by Brittany Higgins.
On current form it appears he hasn’t learned much about keeping tight control of electronic communications.
In a short video clip doing the rounds of Canberra circles, Lehrmann appears to be sitting in a kitchen cradling a drink and singing along to the Clash song – with one notable change to the lyrics …
“I fought the law and … Bruce won,” he warbles, tapping his feet and pointing directly at the camera as he sings his own name.
Metadata on the clip seen by The Australian suggests it was filmed somewhere on the NSW Central Coast, around the beginning of October.
But metadata can never explain the really interesting stuff – including the questions likely to have been posed by his legal team when they learned of it.
Like, for example, on what planet he thought it was a good idea?
Mining mystery
How does a company buy new assets when it’s already insolvent? And then keep trading when its own auditors have warned both the board and the corporate watchdog that the company is likely breaking the law by trading while insolvent?
Normally administrators’ reports are a model of conservative caution – not so much with a 120-page treatise on the collapse of Queensland base metals play Aurora Metals penned by Korda Mentha’s Tony Miskiewicz.
When Aurora collapsed in July it had no cash, no fuel, and was even running short of food for its remaining site workers. Miskiewicz told a creditor’s meeting Aurora had been operating its mines without insurance for months – and small creditors were owed millions by the failed miner.
Aurora’s four underground mines, and two processing plants in the Chillagoe region of north Queensland were effectively the same group of assets that undid one-time market darling Kagara – collectively those mines have been in the hands of administrators and receivers around five times in the last decade, making the group a serious contender for the biggest bust in Australian mining history.
All of that is bad enough, but five months of looking under the hood have revealed enough evidence to suggest Aurora’s financial position had been parlous for much longer than should have been possible, according to Miskiewicz.
Originally trading as ASX-listed Consolidated Tin, the company bought the first half of its assets from the administrators of Kagara in 2013 – and closed a deal in 2021 to buy the other half from Denham Capital-backed Auctus Minerals, which itself collapsed in 2020.
But Aurora was already insolvent when it closed that deal, according to Miskiewicz, who said Aurora had likely “become and remained insolvent from 19 March 2020” – more than a year before the company closed the deal to buy Auctus assets.
Miskiewicz fingers March 2020 as the insolvency date, as that was when the company’s auditors, KPMG, wrote to the company’s board and to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission to flag concerns about the state of the company’s financial position.
Despite this, the company was allowed to complete its acquisition and keep trading.
“We have identified further insolvency indicators which confirm there was not merely a temporary cash flow issue on or around 19 March 2020 but rather an endemic state of insolvency as the Aurora Group was unable to pay its debts as and when they were due and payable,” he said.
All of which may spell trouble for the Aurora directors – including Queensland businessman Ralph De Lacey, Yading Wan, Xudai Sun and Ze Huang Cai.
Particularly since Korda Mentha is so confident of its ground it is already conducting “preliminary investigations into the potential assets of the directors that may be recovered if an insolvent trading claim was successfully pursued”.
At the very least any pursuit of civil action could go to offsetting the claims that directors and related entities have put into the company as creditors – some $38.5m, according to Korda Mentha.
But the people who should really be angry are the employees and trade creditors, collectively losing millions in the collapse of the company.
How can that collapse have been allowed to happen, given the company’s own auditors had refused to sign off on its last set of accounts in 2020, and then even warned regulators of insolvent trading?
Racing to a loss
What is it with horse racing and losing money hand over fist?
And we’re not even talking about the gambling on the actual racing part, rather the increasingly costly job of hosting races at racecourses.
This newspaper noted on Monday the increasingly dire financial situation unfolding for Melbourne Cup host Victoria Racing Club, which among other issues has a mere $20,000 left on a roughly $53.5m facility with ANZ after borrowing another $15m from the bank during its 2023 financial year.
The VRC lost $14.9m in 2023 and there’s a “going concern” notice in its accounts given its current liabilities exceed its currents.
Not that the outlook is rosy elsewhere. The VRC is one of three racing clubs in Melbourne and combined it, the Melbourne Racing Club and Moonee Valley Racing Club, had about $26m in operating losses in 2023.
At least the MRC and MVRC had substantial upwards revaluations of their freehold land and other assets to put them into positive territory statutory profit wise.
The VRC, which heavily relies on its four-day Melbourne Cup carnival, did not have that fiscal luxury.
The news isn’t much better up north too. Sydney’s Australian Turf Club lost $7m this year.
Still, running a loss-making racing club does come with some perks.
The VRC engaged accounting firm EY to provide brand health tracking research. Helpfully, VRC director Glenn Carmody is an EY partner.
Consultant CharterX gets called on by the VRC to, yes, provide consulting services. VRC chairman Neil Wilson is also chairman of CharterX.
Wilson also has board permission to drive a free Lexus, including operating costs, which is provided under an agreement the club has with the car company to be the Melbourne Cup principal sponsor.
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CBA floats sale of pub baron’s boat
Jon Adgemis probably has bigger things on his mind than the loss of his lifestyle trappings, but if you’re in the market for a luxury yacht then the Commonwealth Bank has a deal waiting for you.