A full nine months since Gary Helou ran dairy group Murray Goulburn onto the rocks and left the wreckage to its surviving crew, he semi-emerged from obscurity on Wednesday to provide testimony, by telephone, to the Senate economic references committee's inquiry into the resultant crisis in Australia's dairy industry.
No surprise that he preferred a virtual appearance from his prefab study, behind the safety of his automated gates in Dural, his poodles undoubtedly nearby and providing moral support – had he presented at the committee's public hearing on Thursday in Shepparton, the locals would've torn him limb from limb.
Gary confirmed to Labor senator Chris Ketter that he had not yet even been contacted by ASIC about Murray Goulburn's contradictory public pronouncements and spectacular meltdown in the final 14 weeks of FY16.
And to Nick Xenophon's suggestion that Helou had promised his farmers a $6 farmgate price regardless of global commodities movements, Helou protested that "I never said that", before Xenophon quoted Helou's own words of April 22 (just 48 hours before MG entered a trading halt, leading Helou to resign) back to him: "Regardless of what's happening in the commodity markets, I think [$6] is a very realistic target."
Helou uttered those words at The Australian's Global Food Forum, where agribusinesses go to lock in lifelong saccharine coverage from the paper's business pages. Alongside Helou on last year's panel were Bellamy's Laura McBain (gone), Ellerston's Ashok Jacob (genius MG investor) and Jan Cameron's adviser on Bellamy's, Hugh Robertson. Anyone still have an autographed agenda?
But Helou nevertheless remains indignant. "We did it," he insisted, referring to the farmgate price he maintained in the previous two years.
"But didn't you just stack the balance sheet with debt to deliver what you delivered?" Xenophon countered.
Fair dinkum, GTG's response to that was so unconvincing as to evoke pity. Even from us!
"No … we did … not. We had a strategy to get engaged in Asia." And the rest, as they say, is history.
