THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, MAY 11-12, 2019theaustralian.com.au THE NATION 5

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Taxman to put influencers off their meals

Enjoy restaurants? Sick of catvideos and memes? Jump onInstagram and follow #couscous-forcomment for some light reliefas the restaurant industry turnsthe tables on the ultimate millen-nial vocation, the “influencer”.

The Facebook-owned, image-based platform is huge in restaur-ant land and has spawned thou-sands of influencers whose“business model” is chasing freemeals in exchange for socialmedia posts, usually on Insta-gram, of varying return on invest-ment to the restaurants.

But a couple of high-profilecases have played out in socialand traditional media recently,with restaurateurs telling would-be collaborators exactly whatthey think of the concept of givingaway profit for dubious return.

One, in Adelaide, saw promi-nent chef Duncan Welgemoedengaged in an online spat with aformer My Kitchen Rules contest-ant looking for a freebie thatmade its way to the front page ofAdelaide’s The Advertiser.

Another in Brisbane this weekresulted in a so-called influencer— spurned by a new restaurant —posting fake revenge “reviews” atGoogle Reviews. Unfortunately,

many in the hospitality industryfeel conflicted by incessant over-tures to “collaborate” on socialmedia exchanges for meals, ask-ing themselves: “What happens ifwe don’t go along with this?”

“I don’t think you really needto respond to them,” said chef JoelValvasori, who owns Lulu LaDelizia restaurant in Perth’sSubiaco. “We ignore them; they’djust take up too much of our dayotherwise.”

He described “influencer” as“a bit of a lazy vocation, trying tomake a career out of nothing”,although he acknowledged thatsome businesses felt vulnerable toconstant overtures for collabora-tions. “Personally, I’m very scep-

tical about instant celebrity … andI think the whole influencer thingwill pass when people cotton onto just how much fluff is outthere.”

From July, such undeclaredInstagram endorsements of rest-aurants, cafes, bars and pubs inreturn for freebies might constit-ute a tax problem.

It may be news to many influ-encers that in-kind receipt ofgoods and services is taxable, buttax lawyer Chris Davis, of Mc-Innes Wilson Lawyers, said:“Constructive or actual receipt ofnon-cash benefits has alwaysbeen taxable.” Using trusts andcompanies won’t work for avoid-ing declaring “in-kind” income.

Imminent changes to the lawfirst proposed in last year’s federalbudget and flagged in a Treasurydiscussion paper in Decembermay also hit the Instafamousindustry. From July 1, all income,including all non-cash benefits,will be treated as part of an indiv-idual’s taxable income and will betaxed accordingly at higher ratesthan apply to the companies andtrusts used to date.

Non-cash income, such asmeals, earned via reputation willbe taxed at the higher personalrate and cannot be shielded by atrust or other corporate entity at alower one.

INQUIRER P21

JOHN LETHLEAN NATIONAL RESTAURANT CRITIC

MATTHEW POON

Joel Valvasori of Perth’s Lulu La Delizia restaurant

Joy RestaurantI’m also happy to post a screen shot of you requesting free meals if you like?

Katherine Emily Bowden doesn’t recommend Joy Restaurant22 hours ago .

Very rude, I would not go back. Disappointing food

Joy RestaurantWe see you are the blogger that we called out for requesting a free meal for three people. Its unfortunate that

you think it was rude of us to decline. What’s even more unfortunate is that you’ve tarnished your honesty and integrity to write a fake review. You’re welcome at Joy anytime you like … provided you are willing to pay.

A social media exchange between an influencer and a restaurant

because of its variety and vastnumber of routes, the Grampiansis a prime site for overseas visitors.

Standing near the Taipan Wallyesterday, British climber AlistairKennedy said he and his partnerhad travelled from Bristol to climbin the area and he was surprised bythe push. “It’s unique, we’ve comefrom the other side of the worldjust to climb here,’’ he said.

Parks Victoria chief operatingofficer Simon Talbot is not back-ing away from his criticism ofsections of the sport, which he hasaccused of cultural vandalism,using bolts inappropriately andcrashing through vegetation inpursuit of a vertical thrill.

“You can’t go to a national parkand just cut a track in,’’ he said.

But the law-abiding majority

are furious with the way climbershave been characterised duringthe debate, accusing the govern-ment of deliberate misinfor-mation. Authorities were forced toretract a claim that climbers haddriven a bolt through Aboriginalrock art. The bolt had been placeddecades ago by parks officials.

Parks Victoria has started fin-ing people for climbing in certain

areas, pointing to a 2003 manage-ment plan that created eight pro-tection areas where some sportscould not be carried out.

But amid increased touristactivity and lobbying from local in-digenous groups worried aboutdamage to cultural sites, ParksVictoria has swooped on climbers,citing, among other things, the useof drills and chalk on rock faces,

lighting fires outside of designatedfireplaces and smashing veg-etation while bouldering.

A prominent defender of thesport, Mike Tomkins, says theextreme examples of allegedvandalism are deliberate dis-tortions of the truth, masking awider agenda to shut down largeparts of the park. “It’s scandalous,’’he says. “It’s been hurtful

and harmful. The bans are illegal.”Locals are confused. Nationals

state member for Lowan EmmaKealy says the parties want a resol-ution that respects and preservescultural sites but allows meaning-ful access for climbers.

While much of the attentionhas focused on the impact on high-end sports climbing, the Grampi-ans are considered its nursery,

particularly Summer Day Valleyin the north.

Daniel Pearl is a private opera-tor who has taught thousands ofchildren in the valley but has beentold the area may have a limitedlifespan for teaching. “Findinganother site isn’t straightforward,’’he said. “The way they have shutdown vast areas has been reallyinappropriate.’’

Climbers clinging on after being told to sling their hooks

The secret to finding peace andadrenaline in equal measure inVictoria’s Grampians NationalPark is going deep and high.

Deep into the bush, far from themainstream tourist trail in andaround Halls Gap, and high on therocks, where few tread.

For Australia’s climbing indus-try, that pursuit of tranquillity atthe southern tip of the GreatDividing Range has ended in deepdisappointment and potentialcourt action after the state govern-ment banished the sport fromlarge parts of one of the world’sgreat climbing theatres.

Simon Carter, a Blue Moun-tains-based climbing photograph-er with a global reputation,published a book on the routes inthe Grampians and is one of manyof the industry’s stunned leaderstrying to carve a path forward.

In one stroke of the bureau-cratic pen, Parks Victoria hasclosed more than 500sq km toclimbing and is handing out $1611fines, imperilling the sport andcasting a shadow over a multi-mil-lion-dollar adventure tourismattraction.

At the heart of the bans areclaims of mistreatment of Aborigi-nal rock art and environmentaldamage, sparking a ferociousbattle with a sport that carved itsreputation on its green credentials.It may well end in court as climb-ing activists raise cash for a so-called “access fund’’ and thegovernment ploughs ahead with anew management plan beingworked on by Parks Victoria.

Few things come closer toenvironmental activism than acollective of climbers, a commun-ity that traditionally shuns themadding crowd.

“If you are going to ban climb-ing you might as well ban bush-walking,’’ Carter said yesterday atthe northern tip of the ranges.

“Just look around at some ofthe popular (walking) tracks, allthe litter, graffiti, faeces, vege-tation and infrastructure. Basic-ally, we have been the subject of adisgusting and shocking smearcampaign from Parks Victoria.’’

Considered in the top group ofclimbing destinations in the world

JOHN FERGUSONASSOCIATE EDITOR

SIMON CARTER

Rock climber Kerrin Gale scales the Taipan Wall on the Dance of Life climb in the Grampians while she still can

$947k ‘found in fuel tank’Almost $1 million in cash wasallegedly found concealed in arental car in NSW’s far west yes-terday after a nervous-lookingdriver prompted a police search.

Police stopped to talk to the52-year-old male driver of a rent-al car that was stopped on RakowStreet in Broken Hill at 3.30am.

They allegedly found an icepipe in his luggage but a new fuelstorage tank raised furthersuspicion. It was taken to a localmachinery dealer who drainedthe fuel, allegedly revealing afalse bottom. A steel box wasfound inside the tank, allegedlycontaining $947,000 cash.

The driver was charged withdealing in the proceeds of crimeand goods in custody. He wasrefused bail and will appear inthe Broken Hill Bail Court today.

EMILY RITCHIE

WASHINGTON: For more thanhalf a century, biologists study-ing Antarctica focused their re-search on understanding howorganisms coped with the conti-nent’s severe drought and thecoldest conditions on the planet.

One thing they didn’t reallyfactor in, however, was the roleplayed by the nitrogen-richdroppings from colonies of cutepenguins and seals — until now.

A new study published in thejournal Current Biology foundthe influential excrement sup-ported thriving communities ofmosses and lichens, which inturn sustained vast numbers ofmicroscopic animals such asspringtails and mites for morethan 1000m beyond the colony.

“What we see is that the pooproduced by seals and penguinspartly evaporates as ammonia,”said co-author and ecologist StefBokhorst from Vrije Universiteitin Amsterdam.

“Then the ammonia getspicked up by the wind and isblown inland, and this makes itsway into the soil and provides thenitrogen that primary producersneed in order to survive in thislandscape.”

Braving bitter temperatures,the researchers waded throughfields of animal waste — not tomention hordes of elephant sealsand gentoo, chinstrap, and Ade-lie penguins — to examine thesurrounding soils and plantsusing infra-red gas analysersthat measured their respiration.

Samples examined in labs re-vealed that there were millionsof tiny invertebrates per squaremetre because of the lack ofpredators in their environment— unlike in European or Ameri-can grasslands, where the num-ber may typically be between50,000 and 100,000.

“The more animals we get,the larger the footprint there is,and we’re finding higher diver-sity in those sites,” Mr Bokhorstsaid, emphasising that species’richness was linked less withhow cold or dry the region wasand more to the nutrients addedby the excrement. Ultimately,the research found penguin col-onies to be a proxy for bio-diversity.

AFP

Penguin and seal poop fuel Antarctica

BENT POLICE FEARED INVOLVED IN DOUBLE MURDER, LAWYER X HEARING TOLD

Anti-graft cops warned offOn the night Terence and Chris-tine Hodson were murdered intheir Melbourne home, Victoria’sformer top cop Simon Overlandtold anti-corruption investigatorsto avoid the crime scene so thepublic wouldn’t know it was sus-pected bent police were involved.

It has also emerged that NicolaGobbo, the former defence barris-ter known as Lawyer X, was sleep-ing with drug squad officer PaulDale at the same time she helpedpolice persuade Terence Hodsonto provide evidence against him.

The revelations to the Royal

Commission into the Manage-ment of Police Informants weremade by retired detective inspec-tor Peter De Santo, a senior inter-nal affairs officer who led ataskforce investigation into drugsquad corruption.

Mr De Santo told the hearingthat on the evening of May 16,2004, shortly after the Hodsonswere found executed in their Kewhome, Ms Gobbo called him to sayAndrew Hodson, one of herclients, needed to talk to him.Andrew Hodson subsequentlytold Mr De Santo that his motherand father had been shot in theback of the head. Mr De Santonoted in his police diary the

words: “I don’t want to talk to any-one else. Will you come?’’

Mr De Santo said he agreed tomeet Mr Hodson but was delayedby “police politics’’, with Mr Over-land, then assistant commissionerfor crime, warning that if he wentto the crime scene it would blowthe lid on suspected policeinvolvement. “I was told not togo,’’ he told counsel assisting theroyal commission Chris Win-neke. “There was politics beingplayed out. I later learned thatOverland didn’t want corruptioninvestigators there because themedia would pick up that possiblepolice corruption is involved.’’

Mr De Santo said he was

eventually allowed to attend thecrime scene so long as he stayedout of sight.

The murder of Terence Hod-son, a career criminal and policeinformer who provided a state-ment to Mr De Santo implicatingtwo drug squad detectives, DavidMiechel and Mr Dale, in a theftfrom a suburban drug house, is themost notorious unsolved killingfrom Melbourne’s gangland war.

The royal commission was toldhow Ms Gobbo played a pivotalrole in convincing Terence Hod-son to provide the statement.

Mr De Santo said he and othersenior police developed a strategyto use Ms Gobbo, who had pre-

viously represented AndrewHodson on unrelated criminalcharges, to “get to Andrew to getto Terry”.

“There is no doubt she washelping,’’ Mr De Santo said. Henoted that six months before hisdeath, a fearful Terence Hodsoncalled him from a telephone box.

Mr De Santo noted Hodsontelling him that he’d spoken to the“three striper,” a coded referenceto then detective sergeant Dale.

Mr De Santo’s notes read:“Advised that the blonde lady issleeping with the three striper.’’Mr Dale has confirmed he had asexual relationship with MsGobbo.

Mr Dale was charged with themurder of Terence Hodson butthe case collapsed after Ms Gobborefused to testify and another wit-ness, Carl Williams, was mur-dered. Mr Dale is expected toprovide evidence to the royalcommission when public hearingsresume on Tuesday.

Mr De Santo told the hearinghe learned only in 2013 that MsGobbo had been registered as apolice informant.

Under questioning from coun-sel for Ms Gobbo, Rishni Nat-hwani, he agreed that in hisdealings with Ms Gobbo, shealways acted in the interests of herclients.

CHIP LE GRAND

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Executive & Boards

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