Around the year 2011 there was a lot of development work in the Gladstone area of Queensland. One of these projects was the Curtis Island gas plant built by Bechtel. I, as the owner and operator of Marule Lime near Bundaberg, had been asked to give quotes for supply of aglime to other projects around Gladstone at this time but not for Curtis Island till one day I got a call from Voight Contracting asking me about the new limestone deposit in Bundaberg.
This "new deposit" in Bundaberg was a pile of significantly crushed limestone transported from Sibelco's Calliope deposit, west of Gladstone, to AgCulture Enterprise's yard in Bundaberg for a token pass through a crusher and then transported back along the road it had come from to Curtis Island off Gladstone. The "new deposit" was in fact just a truck dumping a new load at a crushing plant at Claytons Road, Calavos - Bundaberg. Not a new mining deposit at all. To the best of my knowledge and research, there is no evidence that this crushing plant had any approval from the Bundaberg Regional Council.
Voight Contracting was/is a major carrier/customer of Sibelco's Ag-Lime and I think they were a bit "miffed" that they were being cut out of the deal between Sibelco and AgCulture
I had in the past sold Ag-lime to Voight Contracting. To get back some of their sales, I suspect Voight used their clout with the powers controlling the Ag-lime purchasing contracts for Curtis Island to get me a small contract to pacify Voight Contracting and myself. I used Voight Contracting to freight the Ag-lime to Curtis Island for that contract.
So, the question is why would a wealthy multinational company with large mining ventures cart some of their limestone which was already crushed/processed substantially at their large crushing plant at Calliope to a single small unlawful crushing machine at Bundaberg, a distance of 200 kilometres approximately, then cart it back along the same road another 200 kilometres.
Sibelco could simply have in one trip carted a crushing machine from Bundaberg or anywhere else to Calliope and installed it at the end of their crushing plant. This does not make sense as they already had the necessary plant at Calliope to crush what they sent directly from Calliope to Curtis Island anyway. So, shipping the product to Bundaberg was not about utilising a crushing plant that did not and could not exist anywhere else. It was not about a special crushing system in Bundaberg. If the company did not have the required capacity for crushing at Calliope, they could have easily purchased / hired more capacity and located on site to reduce freight charges. For a company the size of Sibelco, the cost of a crushing machine of this size was morning tea money.
I understand that there was a need by the project to get quotes from at least 2 suppliers. By transporting the lime product to Bundaberg and having it crushed there by a different business and then "buying and transporting" it back to Curtis Island, they could get the second quote but control the cost and market. In terms of ticking compliance boxes for competition, this apparently succeeded. There would have been benefits for the Bundaberg company - my long time opposition - no doubt as well.
In late 2011, I lodged a complaint with the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) alleging that the activity of Sibelco carting some of their substantially crushed Ag-lime to an unlawful crushing plant in Bundaberg, having it passed through a crusher and then carted back to Gladstone was for the purposes of eliminating me from the marketplace. I believe that as Curtis Island had some Government controls and requirements, part of the deal would have been that it must be seen that there was competition between supplying companies and that the competition was open. They should at least get two quotes for an item or service.
I suggested to the ACCC that to comply with this idea it was in Sibelco's better interests if they could create a dummy competitor and that way Bechtel would not need to approach me for a quote to supply. Hence AgCulture Enterprises commenced a crushing business all be it apparently unlawful.. This also benefited the Sibelco AgCulture relationship as the owners of AgCulture had only recently purchased the business and it helped them re-establish and expand their business at my expense.
It is well documented that around this time Sibelco donated significant amounts of money to the Campbell Newman for Premier campaign which saw the LNP win the 2012 March State election.
The ACCC after much deliberation said they would log the incident but would not take any action.
The question remains - Did Sibelco's political donations to the LNP's Campbell Newman for Premier campaign, protect them from any potential investigations about anti-competitive behaviour?
Around this time, I also wrote (see attached letter) to the then Deputy Mayor of the Bundaberg Regional Council, Mr Tony Ricciardi, complaining about the unlawful activities of AgCulture Enterprises and their crushing plant. I did not receive a reply. This was disappointing, but not surprising. His previous dealings with our businesses, discussed below, indicated that he would not be interested.
Mr Ricciardi had been the Deputy Mayor of the Isis Shire Council in 1999, and was the person who ratified the decision by the the CEO to commence legal proceedings against my other business, Wagtail Yarns, in the Planning and Environment Court to have the business closed down and the associated machinery removed from the land.
This is a long running sage. Essentially, the Council started proceedings against Wagtail Yarns after just one complaint by the Town Planner. The Council refused to recognise existing use rights (as we started around 1985), refused to consider whether an amendment applied to us, failed to put that amendment before the Court and took us to Court when we had a live development application, and then of course initially achieved the result that they wanted from the Court - that we were unlawful. However, The Council had failed to put that amendment before the Court, but we did when we returned for orders. The Judge was not impressed, he stated that he needed to know about the amendment, gazetted or not. He asked why he was not told, and the Barrister (Wayne Cochrane) and the Solicitor (Dale Ellerman) for the Council, said they knew nothing about the amendment. The matter was not resolved on that day in Court as here was more information to put before the Judge and while more submissions were being made the Isis Shire Council formulated and passed through Council a second amendment, which Mayor Trevor advised was for us so that there was no problem with us continuing the business. That second amendment had not been gazetted by the time the Judge handed down his second judgment and so the legal people did not put this amendment before the Judge either. The case was dismissed.
Just how annoyed would the Judge be if he had been wised up that not only did the Council keep the first amendment from him but that after telling the legal reps that he needed to know about the first amendment, the legal reps then kept the second amendment, which was even more relevant, from him?
Interesting points to note here. The Council Town Planner who started this had a textile dyeing business that he did not subject to the same legal requirements that he was subjecting ours to. The Council solicitor, Dale Ellerman, who said he knew nothing about the first amendment had helped to draft it the same weeks that he opened a file for Wagtail Yarns in Anderssen & Co to prosecute us. And then there is the matter of the Council taking us to Court while we had a live development application. Judge did not like that idea.
The same Councillor - Mr Ricciardi - who could not answer the Marule Lime letter, is the same person who ratified the CEO decision to send Wagtail to Court. He is also the same person who, after the dismissal of the case and the 2 relevant amendments to the Council By-laws, passed a motion in Council that the CEO and Town Planner were to continue sending harassing letters about compliance. This continued for about 4 years until we lodged a claim for Misfeasance in Public Office. More about that another time in Wagtail Yarns.
Mr Ricciardi was a leader in a Council that was hot to prosecute our business when no one was complaining about it (town planner aside) and which Council amendments covered, but could not even reply to my letter.
In late 2012, after some prompting the Bundaberg Regional Council responded to my letter with what I perceive is a fob off response. No explanations or detail. Just waste time and money on FOI's etc. The offending crushing machine is in plain view no more than 50 metres from the bitumen road passing the property. Any person with reasonable eyesight and an open mind could not miss it. Certainly on windy days, the dust is a giveaway.
The current LNP member for the Federal seat of Hinkler - Mr David Batt - was a Councillor for the Bundaberg Regional Council in 2012 when this activity commenced. It seems that the Liberal National party prefer multinational companies that donate money to them rather than the local Australian owned businesses providing choice and competition in their community.
