gay pleads guilty, page-26

• Don Ford, in Comments: Sold 3,555,555 shares at 90 cents each netting $3.2 million. When shares plummeted to 68.5, value of the shares dropped to $2,435,555. Effectively $764,445 he could have lost if he had sold later. Unlike other shareholders who had no inside knowledge. ASIC believe they have been effective with a fine of $50 000. When the fine is taken from $764,445, he is still $714,445 ahead. Is the ASIC “message” to company directors that insider trading still pays profits; even after fines.

• Garry Stannus, in Comments: John Hawkins (#33) makes a telling point – a point that infects the whole of Justice Porter’s “comments in passing sentence”. It is incumbent on the Judge to remedy his error. John Gay had day to day knowledge of the company’s position because he was CEO. This knowledge he must have held well before the compilation of that ‘inside report’. Justice Porter’s ‘slap on the wrist’ sentencing remarks are an affront to the community. I consider the judge’s remarks as telling evidence of what John Hawkins has for quite some years maintained … that Tasmania is a corrupt state. I don’t know what will prove to be the most appropriate vehicle that will overturn this excuse for legal reasoning, but I will look for it. I wish Bob McMahon was still with us. He would have had the words that I lack. And the others that died along the way … Ben and Steve come to mind. I know there are others. Then there are the people of the Tamar Valley, who (not to put too fine a point on the matter) were lied to and cheated. Bob McMahon consistently and lucidly put the argument that the mill could never actually operate … that the business case simply did not stack up. Justice Porter has entered history with his pretence at sentencing. I know that many in the community understand that not only did John Gay do us wrong, but that so too has Justice Porter failed the Tasmanian community. Justice Porter has failed to deliver justice.

•Patrick Durkin in the Australian Financial Review: In the same Launceston court this month, 48-year-old Larry Graue, who had no prior convictions and contributed to the community through voluntary and sporting organisations, was convicted of stealing 35 shipping containers worth $71,000 to repay debts. Having pleaded guilty, Graue was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment and a non-parole period of six months.