Dairy cash mystery: Documents on $11 million transfer can’t be found

More than $10 million from the sale of three Melbourne buildings should have landed in Australian Dairy Farmers’ coffers in 2003 — but it didn’t happen. Here’s what we know.

Mystery remains over how an $11 million oversight occurred. Picture: Zoe Phillips

PROCEEDS from the sale of three buildings in boutique Melbourne suburbs were inexplicably held by the wrong dairy industry body for 16 years.

Australian Dairy Farmers still has no answers for why the cash from the Australian Dairy Industry Council was never transferred to its coffers in 2003.

Mystery remains over how the $11 million oversight occurred, with the ADF unable to find any other documents relating to the funds.

The transfer of $11.2 million from ADIC to ADF occurred in July last year, after the original deed — approved by then agriculture minister Warren Truss — was found in ADF archives.

In a letter tabled this month to a Senate inquiry into the dairy industry, ADF advised income from three properties — commercial buildings in Hawthorn and Melbourne’s CBD, and a block of flats in South Yarra — helped fund ADIC’s operations until 2003, when Dairy Australia was formed.

The buildings were sold for a combined value of $10.5 million and ADIC assets were to be transferred to ADF on the condition the funds were used in the best interests of the dairy industry.

“Despite a detailed search of the archive facility … we were unable to locate any further supporting documents or material,” the ADF’s letter stated, noting that ADF was not responsible for ADIC’s filing prior to 2003.

ADF chief executive David Inall has previously said ADF and ADIC had always been aware of the money, which has been held in trusts or managed funds since 2003 and provided dividends that helped fund both organisations.

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