NSW prisons chief gets the boot; No buyers for Mernda shopping centre

Correctional Services NSW’s now former commissioner Kevin Corcoran at Goulburn Supermax prison.

It was June last year when this masthead first revealed a scandal inside Corrective Services NSW involving a rapist prison guard, Wayne Astill, and the cover-up of his offending by colleagues and management.

Weeks of reporting on the front page of this newspaper prompted the NSW government to launch a special commission of inquiry, led by retired justice Peter McClellan KC. Its 800-page report was published last week and lay at least some of the blame for Astill’s offending with the conduct of his superiors.

“Instead of investigating the rumours, the management of the jail sought to suppress them at multiple levels,” McClellan found. “The middle management of the jail failed to function as it should.”

Astill is serving a 23-year prison sentence for the rape of two female inmates and the indecent assault of another five between 2014 and 2019. Since the trial, 30 more women have come forward alleging they were assaulted in similar circumstances. Police are taking these complaints seriously and a fresh investigation of Astill continues.

There was always going to be little room for CSNSW Commissioner Kevin Corcoran to survive this abomination, especially when he was the assistant commissioner with operational oversight of the jail at the time of Astill’s offending.

Ironically, it’s not only McClellan’s findings that have seemingly killed Corcoran’s ­career. It was actually his evidence and performance during the inquiry hearings that saw him directed to take leave in November. You can be assured that neither the minister’s office nor the department secretary were much impressed with the fumbling of his answers.

And Margin Call has now learned that Corcoran won’t be coming back from that period of leave, either. His contract was effectively terminated on Wednesday on the back of the report’s findings. Again, it’s not that he’s been accused of direct wrongdoing; he just isn’t regarded highly enough to fix the broken culture.

In a very short note to staff that sang no praises for the commissioner (not even a perfunctory “thank you”) Department of Communities and Justice Secretary Michael Tidball said Corcoran would be leaving his role “effective today”.

The only thanks given were to Leon Taylor, who’s been acting in Corcoran’s role, and who Tidball said had stepped forward “during an extremely challenging time for Corrective Services”. It seems Taylor will continue acting until further news develops.

And make no mistake, this ain’t over by a long shot. A taskforce has been established at the direction of NSW Corrections Minister Anoulack Chanthivong to implement McClellan’s 31 recommendations. It speaks volumes that this unit is being run out of the secretary’s office and not within CSNSW itself.

From what Margin Call understands, there’s likely to be a broader clean-out of management still to come. We can only wonder what that bodes for the deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners who got name-checked in McClellan’s report.

No shop buyers

Nothing worse than a failed asset sale – it’s a bad look for business, for revenue and bonuses, and it’s just mortifying when the owners are a handful of bankers with profile.

That’s the way it goes for UBS duo Kelvin Barry and Andrew Stevens, along with their former colleagues Matthew Grounds and Quentin Miller. No bites from any buyers since they listed Mernda Junction Shopping Centre, in outer suburban Melbourne, 18 months ago.

But there’s some reprieve ahead. Margin Call has learned the centre has just completed a base rent review for supermarket giant Coles, the grocery chain being a flagship tenant with an unusually long lease of 20 years. So basically whoever buys the site now has a bit of certainty about a deliverable income stream.

Barry and the rest of them bought the land for $8.6m in 2016 while leaning on finance from the Bank of Queensland, cutting the ribbon on the centre three years later. They did the same with Springhill Shopping Centre in Cranbourne. Buy land, build centre, flog it off; rinse and repeat.

Clearly the other shareholders, like Stratford Advisory’s Tim Antonie, chairman of Breville, and Peter Scott of Gresham Partners, don’t mind this sort of play.

Stonebridge Property Group ran the EOI for Mernda Junction and declined to comment when we contacted them about a fresh sales pitch. Meanwhile Barry, company secretary of Mernda Junction Holdings, didn’t respond to questions.

Elle of a way to spell

Elle Macpherson’s just finished her promotional tour of Oz spruiking that WelleCo brand of “ingestible beauty”, the concept backed by private equity group Era Ventures and others, including former Swisse investor Stephen Ring and rich-lister Rodney Jones.

The brains behind Era Ventures are Melbourne-based Michael da Gama Pinto and Bondi-based Jeremy Evans. They’re directors in The Body’s enterprise, along with Macpherson herself.

Elle Macpherson. Picture: Carly Ravenhall

But, hold on, wouldn’t you think these guys could at least get the name of their brand ambassador correct? She’s only one of the world’s most recognisable supermodels and the founder.

The website features no end of guff about the product, but misspells Macpherson’s surname, dropping the “a” and capitalising the “p” like she’s of Irish heritage and not Scottish which, like, everybody knows.

Makes you wonder: how well do these people know each other at all?