Lib MP Ian Goodenough targeted for Senate grilling

The ALP will target Liberal MP Ian Goodenough over using official social media to promote business interests.

MP Ian Goodenough (blue striped shirt) with members of the Australia Asia Exchange Conference in June.

Labor will use parliament to target Liberal MP Ian Goodenough ­following revelations the West Australian backbencher used his official social media to promote his business interests and took Asian investors to two lobster businesses that give his company a commission for securing export deals.

The Australian has been told Labor senators will probe the actions of the Moore MP through Senate estimates hearings next week and are preparing to grill officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, headed by Martin Parkinson.

Labor will outline a list of ­actions by Mr Goodenough, ­revealed in The Australian in the past fortnight, focused on seeking official responses on whether ­officials believe they constitute a conflict of interest.

The Australian understands Labor is also considering raising Mr Goodenough’s actions in question time and may attempt to refer him to a privileges committee.

Mr Goodenough has conceded it was “inappropriate” to use his ­official LinkedIn account to spruik the sales campaign of a property company in which he has a 50 per cent stake that he has not declared on his parliamentary register of members’ interests.

“I acknowledge the posts on LinkedIn referenced in The Australian were inappropriate and I am in the process of deleting them,” Mr Goodenough said last Monday.

The developer and owner of the majority of the lots in the site he promoted on his LinkedIn is Westcapital Group, where Mr Goodenough is a director and has a 50 per cent shareholding through Seventeenth Avenue Nom­inees. He has not ­declared his stake in Westcapital Group through a subsidiary in the register of members’ interests.

Mr Goodenough has defended taking a delegation of Asian investors around two lobster businesses — outside his electorate of Moore — that give his company a commission for ­securing export deals.

He suggested to a delegation of investors they visit the Lobster Shack and Indian Ocean Rock Lobster processing factory while he was a keynote speaker in front of 250 people at a conference in Perth last June.

The WA MP said he took the delegation of 25 people around the businesses the day after the conference as a private citizen, despite promoting Lobster Shack on his Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.

The Lobster Shack and Indian Ocean Rock Lobster processing factory is owned by David Thompson, who owns a house on the same street as Mr Goodenough in Mindarie, in Perth’s north.

Mr Goodenough co-owns a business with Mr Thompson’s son Brent that collects commissions for sec­uring export deals for other businesses in the Thompson family.