Clean up probe

By Sally Bird
CONCERNS over the lack of local contractors involved in Grocon’s $76 million Black Saturday bushfire clean up, as revealed in a Mail investigation, will be raised in State Parliament.
The Mail probe has found that few of the contractors hired to work on the $20 million clean up of the 530 properties destroyed in the Marysville, Buxton and Narbethong area, known as The Triangle, were based within an hour’s drive of the area.
This is despite Grocon’s claims that 57 per cent were ‘local contractors’ and State Government assertions that locals would be hired “as far as is possible”.
However, Grocon claims that a number of locals had to be overlooked because they did not meet the required standards to work on the clean up sites.
The Shadow Minister for Bushfire Response Peter Ryan said the Coalition was lodging a Question on Notice to obtain information about the Marysville clean up tender process.
Third generation Marysville resident Terry Ross applied to work on the clean up after hearing Grocon would be hiring locals.
But he said he was unable to get one hour’s work in the Marysville clean up despite having spent $100,000 buying a tip truck and bobcat, and getting the required red card ticket and bobcat competency certificates.
“I sat and watched 40 trucks a day go in and out of Marysville for three months despite begging for work almost daily.
“I spoke to everyone, Delta, Grocon, ADH, everyone I could think of. I couldn’t get one hour’s work,” he said.
“They had an answer for everything. No matter what I came up with they had an answer for it.
“And it wasn’t just me. It was the same for everyone up here. No local contractor from this area got hired in the clean up.”
In a list of the contractors who worked on the clean up in The Triangle provided to the Mail by Grocon, four of the seven companies are classed as ‘local contractors’.
They were Mansfield Construction, (Mansfield), ADH Civil (Eltham), Prompt Environmental (Woodstock) and North West Equipment Hire (Yea).
The other three were metropolitan Melbourne based.
When asked how contractors could be classed as local when they were more than an hour’s drive from the clean-up area, Grocon spokeswoman Jane Wilson said: “Local or regional companies, I suppose you could say.”
Ms Wilson said about 15 locals attended a meeting in Marysville to sign up to work on the clean up but they did not have the required paperwork and many did not wish to go through the process of getting it.
She said Grocon put them together with contractors who did have the paperwork where possible.
“Mr Ross declined the work offered within The Triangle region with one of the clean up contractors.”
Mr Ross said Grocon’s assertion is inaccurate.
Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority spokeswoman Melissa Arch said her organisation did not know which contractors Grocon employed.
“We wouldn’t have that level of detail. We hired Grocon. They had the contract. They engaged the contractors. It is generally accepted that anything withing a 30 kilometre radius is considered local,” she said.
Delta Group demolition project manager Robert Hughson said he hired 15 people from Kinglake mainly through JR’s Earthworks of whom “we sent five or six to work in Marysville”.
JR’s Earthworks owner John Rischitelli said Delta employed just one of his staff members who worked in the Kinglake area throughout the clean up.
“I can’t understand why they did it the way they did. It was just crazy. They should have used more locals,” he said.
HWM contractors project manager Greg Labis said his company hired up to three locals as drivers.
“Grocon had fairly strict requirements and all this paperwork.
“A lot of the locals didn’t meet that requirement and they didn’t want to go through the process.
“The ones that did we didn’t have any problem hiring them.”
North West Equipment Hire manager Stuart Pascoe said his company got the paperwork required by Grocon but it was not hired to work.
ADH Civil manager Andrew Forsyth-Grant said his company cleaned up 50 house sites in Buxton, Narbethong and Granton for which it was paid $700,000.
Mr Forsyth-Grant said he hired two people from Coldstream, who had worked for the Narbethong sawmill that closed due to the fires, as part of the work.
Mansfield Construction managing director Steven Bell, whose brother comes from Buxton, said his company was in the bushfire affected area the morning after the fires “and we’re still there”.
He said his company was employed by Grocon to clean up “but it was mainly done by the bigger contractors like Delta from Melbourne”.
“On the Grocon side, we hired contractors who came out of Mansfield and (three from) Buxton.”
Steve Olarenshaw, operations manager for Nunnawading based Eastern Plant Hire, said he was hired by Delta to provide owner/operator trucks and other equipment to the area for the three-month clean up.
Ms Wilson said in addition to the list of contractors, the company also hired a local electrician and a plumber directly.