So, Rick, you have been reading people's emails and letters lately, specifically an apology letter that was sent by a senior government bureau crap. So can you read it to me?
I can, because I have a copy of it, and it's quite extraordinary. It was written by the former Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and H. K. Russell Herald. Everyone calls him Rusty, and he was apologizing for his role in this enormous and strange saga, which involved a failed plot to take over Meals on Wheels by a private company, a consulting firm that was receiving millions of dollars in government funding.
Rick Morton is a senior reporter at the Saturday Paper. The letter in front of him from Rusty is to the chair of Meals on Wheels. In it, Rusty apologizes for his behavior towards Meals on Wheels staffers, saying it fell well short of the standards expected of someone like him.
He goes on to say, I also noted my emotional state as it was at the time in relation to this project meant I was in effect not fit for duty. This is something I have since reflected on and something for which I must and will be held accountable for as a senior public servant. My regret is not identifying this at an earlier point in time.
From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am today, Rick Morton on the failed plot to take over Meals on Wheels, the private company and the millions in government money. It's Tuesday, February eighteen. Take me back to the start of this story wreck, before Rusty got involved, before he had to make this apology for his emotional state. Where does this begin?
I mean, things always seemed better at the beginning, don't they, Because Rusty was one of the kind of cohort of senior public servants who were charged with you know, home service, age care reform, meal delivery reform, and way back when in twenty nineteen twenty, when the Royal Commission into Age Care reports back, the Department decides that Meals on Wheels is not going to be able to compete well in
this new future because lower behold. You won't be surprised to learn that there's a lot of marketization happening and a lot of competition in age care because we privatized everything. So the solution they thought was to get meals on wheels into a competitive position. The problem was that the department and some people within the department really didn't like meals on wheels. They hated dealing with them, they hated giving money to them because they were so disparate. There
were different peak organizations in the different states. Some of them did frontline service deliveries, some of them did not. And then, of course you've got each individual service which is run by community grassroots organizations, but are often hosted and subsidized by local councils who don't want to do it anymore. And so the government decided to give a whole bunch of money directly to a private consulting firm that had even less experience in meals delivery, Miles Morgan Australia.
Okay, so tell me a bit about this company, Miles Morgan, Australia.
The director of Miles Morgan Australia for the entirety of this project is Luxman Gonnaratnam. He actually bought the company in twenty twenty two after serving as its chief executive since twenty nineteen. And they were given their first contract to kind of look at a feasibility study, and you know, come up with a bottle for how meals on wheels
could deliver meals at an efficient price. But I think one thing that's important to know here for context is that we now know that Miles morg in Australia had likely had bigger designs than just this immediate project. They had an eye to, you know, a much longer horizon about what they can do in a meals on wheel space,
and they needed strategic relationships to do this right. And what are the strategic alliances that Luxban Gunnaratnam form in this sense was the then CEO sometimes general manager of Newcastle Meals on Wheels, a man called Damien Isaacs. Mylesborg in Australia essentially cements their strategic alliance with Damien Isaacs by appointing him as a future Fit brand ambassador from
July twenty twenty three. The position came with this bonus salary for him and apparently his wife of about one hundred and seventy thousand dollars and they were both red hot, red hot for this, you know the scope of what they were able to do with government backing to completely
transform meals on wheels. And when they get this contract extension both Gunneratum and Isaacs, you know, they're jumping for joy basically, and there's emails between the two of them where they're actually planning to fly to Brisbane where there's a conference where a bunch of meals on wheels people are attending. And it also happens to be Rusty the
Health bureaucrat Rusty Herald's birthday. And so Isaacs writes this email to Gunneratanum on July seventeen, twenty twenty three, and he says, we'd as brother, we are getting Rusty smashed. And then Gunna Ratnam, who is a man at least in his forties, if not older, he responds to that email going, yes, I told him to brace himself as the Brown Brothers were in town and brackets much like the Blues Brothers, but far better.
Right, Yeah, I suppose The next question is, I mean, what do they do next? Do they get Rusty smashed?
Well, I mean, and I need to be fair to Rusty here because Rusty, you know, we have no evidence that Rusty knew about this plan. And at the same
time they're doing all of this. Miles Morgan, Australia have spent about one hundred thousand dollars on legal advice through a law firm to help ISAACS with what Newcastle Meals and Wheels subsequently said under new management was a hostile takeover attempt of the New South Wales peak body Meals and Wheels New South Wales of the board because Newcastle Mills and Wheels CEO ISAACS was a member of the board and according to this timeline of events, you know,
there was influence being brought to bear on the board to try and shape it to their vision.
Right. Okay, So you have this company, Miles Morgan, which has won a government contract to transform Meals on Wheels, but at the same time they're also getting legal advice on how to take over Meals on Wheels what's been described as a hostile takeover. So how do they go on that?
Well, there was yeah, not well, but they tried. They tried. It was kind of like a Game of Thrones thing was happening for a control of the future of Meals on Wheels, including the control of the brand and the logo.
So Gunnar Ratnam, you know, he's possibly we don't know, but possibly using taxpayer funds from the contract to pay a law firm to get legal advice about how to take over Meals on Wheel State Peak Body and then gets that same law firm to get advice about collapsing or winding up Meals on Wheels Australia, transferring it to a company limited by guarantee, and then saying, hey, do we get to keep the state trademarks?
I mean, Rick, what's being attempted here is audacious.
At the very least, it is audacious, and as my editor said, it is a finely threaded needle. And there's no better example of that than what happened at the Whitehase City Council. So there is a service in Victoria which is threatening to be shut down because the local council and Whitehorse City Council doesn't want to run it anymore.
You know, the Department realized they needed someone to come in and save Whitehorse because I'd have some vulnerable Australians without meal delivery services, which is part of the age care safety in it right, Miles Morgan Australia are the preferred people to go in and save that service. The government just wants to give them money to go and take over it, but they can't because they're not Amalth
Home Support Package contract holder. So what they do is they say, hey, Newcastle Meals and Wheels, can you be the host of this service? And so Newcastle Mills and Wheels, when Damian Isaac was still the CEO, said sure, let's do it. And that's what happened for a short while.
Okay, So in reality though, it was Miles Morgan Australia who was running the whole operation at white Horse.
That's exactly right. They had control of the systems, control of the buildings, they were planning the runs, the meal delivery of everything, but they couldn't do it officially because they weren't a holder of a Commonwealth Home Support Package and a proved provider of one of those contracts, and so they had to, you know, essentially trick everyone into thinking that Newcastle Meals on Wheels was the service provider
when they had almost nothing to do with it. And of course then that became a difficult deceit to uphold. When a pesky senator by the name of Jenet Rice, a Green senator at the time, starts asking questions and demanding to come and have a look.
And so what happens when she gets there, I love this part of it. That's after the break. So Rick Miles Morgan is secretly running meals on Wheels in white Horse and Senator Janet Rice has just started asking questions about this and has decided to visit the site. So tell me about her trip there.
So the Department knows at this point that the white Horse Mills on Wheels site is being run by Miles
mog and Australia. They claim that they didn't know they were as heavily involved as they were, which then necessitates this Rube Goldberg machine cover up between Miles Borg and Australia and the Department with the reluctant acquiescence of Newcastle Meals on Wheels, where they say, all right, Jenet Rice is coming, milesin bog in Australia, will send home all of the staff who have been propping up this service
and will just send the Newcastle Meals on Wheels. CEO Damien Issax, he's still coo at this point to take Senator Rice around, do a tour of the site, and you know, we'll give him a script to tell him what he can and can't say, so we don't tip
it anyone off. And a Newcastle Meals and Wheels are like, what Hang on a second, this isn't right, And they actually asked during a board meeting there was a phone call with Rusty Herald who was dialed in and they said, why do we have to lie to Senator Rice on the thirtieth January this is twenty twenty four that you know we've been out there running the White House service
when we haven't. It's been Milesbaugh in Australia. And the file note that they made says Russell said the department were not aware that MMA were in the White Horse as much as they were, and they don't want that, and so they MMA are now being managed and will not be used after the eighth of March twenty twenty four.
So essentially they agree that they'll send Damien Isaacs with a script that was written by Luxhman Gunner Atnam and the script literally says to any Meals on Wheels person there that day that if you're asked who you work for in the first instance, you say Damien Isaacs or Newcastle Meals on Wheels, and only if you're pushed do you say Miles Morgan Australia.
I mean this is outrageous. Rick, you got to help people to lie to a senator like this.
Well apparently you can. And they essentially got away with it because they split it up like they You sent Damien with Senator Rice, and they sent her adviser off with another Meals and Wheels member, And of course Newcastle Mills and Wheels, who tried to warn about this visit being faked anyway, were so concerned by what they saw and what actually happened on the ground that they actually they rang Senator Rice afterwards to say, heng On, what
you thought you saw was a complete fabrication. None of what you saw today was real. It was a facade to try and trick you into thinking that this was being managed by us, and it's not. It's a private consultant. And then at Senator estimates on February fifteenth, so only
you know. Less than a month later, Briany Mitchell, who's the new chair of Newcastle Meals and Wheels in her team, wrote to First Assistance Sectary THEA Connolly in the Department of Health and said we were gobsmacked to hear that Miles Morgan Australia have been provided a new contract, a new contract for one point six million dollars to quote unquote close out the transition of white Horse meals on
wheels to Newcastle. And they had sunk at the department that's had sunk many millions of dollars into this project already and they had almost nothing to show for it. And so suddenly miles Borg in Australia gets one point six million dollars to do a document handover and a transferred to business as usual, which is yeah, it's unfathomable. So the Australian National Order Office is investigating all of this and they're actually due not too far away from now actually to hand down their report.
So rick at the end of all of this, where does it leave meals on wheels? Because despite whatever the department might have thought of the service, it is essential for so many people. I actually used to go out with my Umar and my upah when I was young and we would do meals on wheels together, and I did and I remember the people who we gave the meals to and they're often lonely, elderly people who really rely on the service. So I mean, we'll meals and wheels continue.
That is a thank you for making that observation because really the biggest value in meals and Wheels is the time they spend with the elderly. It's incidental time, but it's still time. It's not like they just fling the frozen meal through the kitchen window. They might do a little bit dusting whether they're there, or sit down and
have a cup of tea. It's part of the service, right, and you can't replace that with a full blown market and I think that apartment did recognize that, and I think perhaps that's why they got so overly invested in this thing to the detriment of meals and Wheels. Funnily enough, you know, people want that kind of level of service.
They don't want another. You know, NDOS comes along and then everything gets marketized and then suddenly you know, no one's doing anything that they're not getting paid for, whereas meals and Wheels was fundamentally different to that. And you know, there's a difference between supporting someone to adapt to a new world and forcing them out of operation because you don't like the model.
Quick thank you for your time, Thank.
You Ruby for your volunteer service as a youth. I loved it.
Also in the news today, the Reserve Bank of Australia is widely expected to cut interest rates today as the bank holds its first meeting of the year. The official cash rate has been at a thirteen year high of four point three five percent since November twenty twenty three, and most economists are predicting a cut of point twenty
five percentage points to four point one percent. And the US Secretary of State says Ukraine and Europe will be part of any quote real negotiations to end Russia's war in Ukraine, attempting to downplay Europe's concerns of being cut out of initial talks between Russia and the United States set to take place in Saudi Arabia this week. Maco Rubio said a negotiation process has not yet begun in earnest and Ukraine and other European countries will be brought
into the fold as talks advance. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.