Payments for never-delivered radio traffic reports were merely mislabeled in a set of records that are now being used to make a case for financial wrongdoing, Australian Aerial Patrol boss Harry Mitchell claims.
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Mr Mitchell collected an additional wage from the patrol for delivering the reports live to i98fm listeners from 1989 to 2008.
A damning report of the patrol’s finances alleges he claimed $334.51 a week for his services, including payments totaling $121,758 in the years after the reports ceased.
Mr Mitchell says he was only ever paid $200 a week for the reports. He concedes these payments continued after the reports ceased, but says this was with the approval of the patrol’s board.
“I asked the board if I could be paid an additional $200 a week for traffic reports in view of the workload over and above the workload I did. That was granted. I stopped in 2008, but ... I asked [the board] if the payments could continue in light of my 24/7 activity.”
“I think anybody who knows me and my commitment to the organisation knows how hard I worked - early mornings, late night meetings.
“Simply: I was in demand and I still am.”
Asked why the patrol – which accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money and donations each year – would foot the bill for the reports, Mr Mitchell said the arrangement offered good publicity.
”We were keeping the name of Bendigo Babnk Aerial Patrol and McDonald’s Aerial Patrol up in lights,” he said.
“It tightened the leverage for us to attract our sponsors for such a long time.”
The payments were noted in bookkeeping records that were recently brought to light as part of a forensic accounting investigation into the patrol’s financial troubles.
The investigation came amid infighting within the patrol’s board.
“The invoices didn’t change in their format from when I was doing the traffic reports … she [the bookkeeper] kept the same terminology on the invoice,” Mr Mitchell.
“It was probably an oversight, but the word ‘traffic’ appeared on all later recipient-created invoices.
“People have seen that as an opportunity in their favour. They’ve seen the word ‘traffic’ and they’ve said ‘woah – they [the reports] stopped in 2008’.
“I should have seen it but I didn’t; I put my hand on my heart and tell you what happened.”
Mr Mitchell described the traffic report service as “a huge task” that was difficult to execute, particularly in its infancy.
“I had to build networks [of people to telephone about traffic] and infrastructure,” he said.
“It’s easy now because there’s camera on every telegraph post … I didn’t have that luxury.”