Greasing the Wheels

energy giant BG Group’s Queensland CSG subsidiary QGC 119 . On the board of the
Flinders Group is John Cotter Jnr, son of the Chair of the Gasfields Commission 120 .
The full extent of job-swapping between mining companies and roles as political
advisors and in the senior ranks of the bureaucracy is not well understood. There are
also examples that flow in the other direction, senior and influential government roles
being filled by coal and gas company operatives, without any cooling off period,
including the former Premier Campbell Newman’s chief of staff, Ben Myers, who
formerly worked for QGC 121 . In fact, the offices of the then Premier, Minister Seeney
and Minister Cripps all contained ex-mining industry employees 122 . For example, Matt
Adams, formerly development manager at Ambre Energy, which proposed an open-cut
coal mine on the rich farmland at Felton became a senior policy adviser to Deputy
Premier Jeff Seeney 123 .
The following is a list of known high profile shifts between the mining industry and the
Qld Government in recent years, where direct moves were made from mining to
government or vice versa, without any apparent cooling off period:
Name Government positions Industry positions Reference
Jim
Belford
2007-2009: Principal
Environmental
Investigator, EPA
September 2011 – present: Team
Leader, Environmental Compliance,
Santos Ltd
LinkedIn, Jim Belford,
https://au.linkedin.com/in/jimbelford-a3332b9a
2009-2010: Manager,
Regional Investigations,
EPA
August 2014 – present: Senior
Advisor, Governance, Assurance
and Approvals, Santos Ltd
2010-2010: Director,
Petroleum and Gas, DERM
Shane
McDowall
2010-2011: Director, LNG
Enforcement, Qld
Government
July 2008 – June 2010:
Deputy Coordinator
General, Department
August 2010 – March 2014:
Managing Director, Flinders Group
See LinkedIn, Shane McDowall
https://au.linkedin.com/in/shan
e-mcdowall-36252535 and
Revolving Doors Queensland,
119 Flinders Hyder website, ‘Our Projects’, 21 st March 2016, http://www.flindersgroup.com.au/projects/
120 Flinders Hyder website, ‘Our People’, 21 st March 2016,
http://www.flindersgroup.com.au/team/board-of-directors/
121 LinkedIn, Ben Myers, accessed 8th March 2016, https://au.linkedin.com/in/benmyers1
122 See LinkedIn, Mitch Grayson, https://au.linkedin.com/in/mitchgrayson, LinkedIn, Lisa Palu,
https://au.linkedin.com/in/lisa-palu-a78183b3, and LinkedIn, Matt Adams,
https://au.linkedin.com/in/matt-adams-743211b2, accessed 8th March 2016.
123 LinkedIn, Matt Adams, accessed 8th March 2016, https://au.linkedin.com/in/matt-adams-743211b2
Greasing the Wheels 37