AN INVESTIGATION has been opened into the awarding of lucrative land valuation contracts in NSW after documents suggested a company the Valuer-General, Philip Western, helped establish has been paid tens of millions of dollars for valuation services.
Figures obtained by the Herald indicate the company, Quotable Value Australia, where Mr Western was general manager before his appointment as Valuer-General in 2003, has received $37 million from contracts to value land for rating and taxing purposes since mid-2007. They show its closest rival, Crown Valuation Services, received $2.9 million in the same period.
Twenty firms have won land valuation work since 2004 but Quotable Value Australia has received 60 per cent of the total payments, or $37.8 million from total payments of $63.5 million, the documents show.
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But Mr Western says the figures, supplied by him to a parliamentary committee, are wrong and that Quotable Value's share of the work is $13.6 million or 16.6 per cent. He says the next largest market share for the period is Crown Valuation Services with $9.3 million, or 11.3 per cent.
The Finance Minister, Greg Pearce, has asked his director-general, Michael Coutts-Trotter, to investigate.
The valuations are used by the government to determine land tax and by councils to issue rate notices. Quotable Value, like its competitors, has won its contracts via open tender.
The company, established in 2000, is an arm of a New Zealand government-owned corporation, Quotable Value Ltd. A review of its performance tabled in the NZ Parliament in 2002 said it was having ''difficulty breaking into the Australian market''.
Mr Western chaired the tender evaluation panel from 2005 to 2007 after which responsibility for rating and taxing valuation tenders was transferred to the land and property information division of the Lands Department.
Mr Western said he had ''no business or personal interest'' in Quotable Value Australia or its NZ parent. He said he was one of six panel members, including an external probity officer, and his previous employment was ''widely known and declared to the panel''.
The investigation follows separate data tabled at a committee hearing last week showing that wealthy landowners had reduced their property valuations for rating and land tax purposes by billions of dollars since 2000 after objecting or taking court action. The figures sparked a dispute between Mr Western and the committee over the release of data that would show the scope of the reductions being given for all land in NSW.
The committee chairman, the Hornsby MP, Matt Kean, a chartered accountant and auditor, said ''serious questions'' were raised. ''These revelations seriously undermine the public confidence,'' he said. ''I believe that we need a complete review of the NSW valuation system.''
Read the full article in the SMH here.
