Public transport, or at least its management, has been in the news a lot lately. And it's been there for bad reasons. Many spent last week transfixed by IBAC hearings as part of Operation Esperance.
Viewers heard riveting accounts of secret cash payments from cleaning contractors (Transclean) to transport managers, unauthorised extensions of contracts, shoddy cleaning work including during the COVID pandemic, betting syndicates with amazing returns, secret phones, shady job offers, multi-person money laundering, excessive chumminess, convoluted house financing deals, 'sprinkles', 'stuff' and more. Audio and video from house raids and covert surveillance made the coverage more gripping than your average hearing.
The affair involves V/Line's CEO James Pinder and Metro Trains' Peter Bollas (Rolling Stock Manager). Both were suspended in August and formally sacked last week. V/Line also ended Transclean's contract while Metro is investigating internal probity processes. IBAC will continue to collect evidence and write its report. It remains to be seen whether evidence is sufficient for the pair and others involved, such as Transclean boss George Haritos, to be brought to trial.
The case of James Pinder is particularly interesting. He is part of a large cohort of UK rail managers we have imported to run our trains in the last 20 years. The initial impetus for this was rail franchising which started in 1999. Even though V/Line has reverted to state ownership and Metro is Hong Kong owned, British overseers remain over-represented in a complex organisational hierarchy that I've previously suggested resembles colonial structures.
Why wouldn't they stay? The rest of Australia disparages Melbourne's weather but we tell similar jokes about London's. Melbourne ranks in the world's top few cities for livability. And the pay's great, with the V/Line CEO (for example) taking home more than the state premier.
International managers can bring world expertise to little provincial train systems. And introduce a drive, enterprise and objectivity that local bosses might have lacked. In plainer language that might mean cutting costs, ending over-staffing and lessening the unions' grip on how things are done.
That was the plan anyway. V/Line's James Pinder, corroborated by Transclean's George Haritos, gave another perspective at the IBAC hearings. This was a personal view, based on what it is like to start work in a new country in which you know no one.
Someone established here will have formed ties based on family, interests, clubs, sports, schools, ethnicity and/or community. Or at least some of these. They will have no difficulty in finding things to do or people to meet on their days off. A few friends may be work colleagues. But they are unlikely to be a majority of a person's social circle. And relationships with them would normally be, as is proper, purely social.
Those listening last week heard that Pinder arrived in Australia basically friendless. His first, best and possibly only friends were met through work (then Metro Trains). Such a circumstance might not be uncommon in senior ranks where working hours are not conductive to hobbies, clubs or other interactions that could expand one's social circle to people outside work.
Pinder would often go to the races or casino with his new friends. By far the most important relationship was with Haritos. At this time Transclean was in dispute with Metro. As part of the subsequent resolution, Metro's Andrew Lezala introduced Pinder (who was Metro's Rolling Stock Manager before Bollas) to Haritos. They soon found they had common sporting team interests and formed a close friendship. This was even though in work life they were on opposite sides of an increasingly lucrative contractual relationship.
Pinder left Metro in January 2016 after about three years. He worked in his native UK for a bit then returned to lead V/Line in November 2016. His
LinkedIn is here. The V/Line that Pinder inherited was in a bad state. The CEO position was only vacant as V/Line's previous boss left under a cloud of
poor operational performance (the wheel slip affair) and corruption allegations (IBAC
Operation Lansdowne). An incoming foreigner would be a cleanskin, with no chance of being associated with past internal problems.
As the inquiry heard, the Pinder-Haritos friendship went beyond what most friendships would, especially given their work roles. Allegations of impropriety made headlines and TV news. Without being specific (IBAC's report will likely give the definitive account) the dealings were enough for V/Line's board to immediately sack Pinder and cancel the contract with Transclean.
Watching the proceedings reinforced on me a potential loneliness that socially isolated foreign-recruited managers are prone to. This is due to their life revolving around work and people met through work. This opens them to a vulnerability that settled people with established roots may lack. Friendships may be few, tight and be mostly with people met through work. Under certain circumstances, such as where friendships cut across supplier relationships, the vaunted objectivity of an imported boss can give way to a partiality that affects the integrity of their work. Especially if combined with character flaws including greed, temptation and naivety (which job recruiters do not necessarily pick up).
What one might call the 'lonely expatriate syndrome' cannot explain Metro's Peter Bollas situation in this. His evidence sparked some of the most sensational stories to come out of the Operation Esperance hearings. In particular the extra business opportunities due to COVID-19 and short-cuts when it came to
not spraying trains. These angles provided a direct link between this affair and the state's number one ongoing news story for 2020.
As for Transclean, the IBAC people listened incredulously when they heard about the extraordinary race picking ability of Haritos and his regular success with high-yield but low probability quadrellas. Listeners also came away astonished with the lengths taken, involving multiple payments and accounts, to finance the deposit on Pinder's $2.5m Williamstown house. It was all so complex that the broadcast hearings will resume on Friday to cover everything the Commission wanted to ask.
IBAC will have a lot of work to do afterwards. All we can do is await their report and any subsequent action arising. But it would already seem from the hearings that neither the public interest nor even an ordinary duty owed to one's employer was necessarily uppermost in all minds at all times.
Self-interest may have driven some. The problem is that, if less honourable forms of self-interest are exposed, it does not pay out. Indeed one might have to pay in. In the likely words of the Williamstown house auctioneer, "It's not where we start that counts but where we finish". And a pathetic end to one's career is far far worse than a pathetic start since the currency is time and that's unredeemable.
1 comment:
Could this have had its genesis back in the Naphthine government when Vline was forced to accept a budget cut of $20m/year? Vline had to sack many of the middle managers and rail engineers - the people that manage the detail of operating a railway, and prospective internal candidates for the role of CEO? These were replaced initially by a highly paid CEO from Queensland, who presided over the rail wear issue. He was then followed by Pinder.
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