Love to have a beer with Duncan (and Marcus)

It's been a wild couple of days in the Supreme Court as the hearing into the liquidation of the Melbourne University Student Union (MUSU) revealed some juicy insights into the ethical, legal and financial depths that MUSU sunk to in its final years. It now emerges that the grossly incompetent mismanagement which had already been well documented was in fact the tip of the iceberg, with a much greater iceberg lurking just beneath the surface as the HMAS MUSU cruised headlong into the waters of a painfully overstretched metaphor.

Strangely the Melbourne media ignored it, and it was up to Louise Perry at The Australian to share the juicy tidbits:

TWO former presidents of the failed Melbourne University Student Union are accused of setting up companies and creating false identities to win lucrative business contracts from the union.

A Melbourne court was told that Darren Kenneth Ray, president of the union in 2002, and Benjamin Cass, president in 2000, had used the names "Marcus Kemp" and "Duncan Fisher" to win or maintain the business contracts for running student elections.

Court-appointed liquidators questioned the pair yesterday as part of a three-day hearing and have issued dozens of summonses in relation to the misappropriation of tens of thousands of dollars.

The hearing comes nearly a year after a liquidator's report recommended police investigate the union over the altering of records, awarding of contracts, rigging of elections and travel schemes. Nobody has been charged with any offences.

It seems that Ray and Cass (otherwise known as Kemp and Fisher) had been actively involved in a series of companies which won a variety of lucrative contracts from the union without disclosing their interest in those companies. Bizarrely, this included a company, GTS Elections, which won the right to stage the union elections where Cass and Ray's faction played a big (and largely succesful - what a surprise!) part.

The consequences for the terrible twosome could be dire. Whilst at this stage the hearing is attempting to get to the heart of the union's financial woes, legal action couldn't be far off. It appears that a significant amount of fraud has taken place, and there is surely the potential for the two to be required to pay back the ill-gotten gains if fraud has indeed occurred. Perhaps the two have rolled doubles for the third time in the great game of Monopoly that is life.

As a personal footnote to it all: in 2002 myself and a friend were keen to challenge the status quo and formed a short lived ticket. Due to some questionable dealings on our part, the two of us were forbidden from being involved in the election. Who was it who laid a complaint against us? Darren Ray. And who was it who heard the complaint? GTS Elections, a group we now know was taking its orders from the terrible twosome. Hmmm, now things start to make sense.