Assistant health minister Fiona Nash confirmed on Tuesday night that her chief of staff, Alastair Furnival – who aided in pulling down the Health Star Rating website – has shares in his wife’s lobbying company, Australian Public Affairs (APA), which represents snack food giant Mondelez.
In addition to being married to the head of APA, Furnival has also served as a chairman for the lobbying firm, The Guardian reports.
Nash told parliament that Furnival’s wife, Tracy Cain had pledged that both she and the company would not make representations to the Department of Health or the health minister Peter Dutton.
“On the advice available to me these undertakings have been honoured in full,” Nash told parliament. “Indeed, neither my chief of staff nor my office has met with Mondelez – formerly Kraft – the owners of Cadbury, with whom he worked as a chief economist.”
“…In short, both Mr Furnival and Ms Cain have taken proper and appropriate steps to prevent conflicts or potential conflicts between the private business and his duties as my chief of staff by withdrawing from any work for clients in the health portfolio,” said Nash.
Both Nash and Furnival came under fire last Friday when the Health Star Rating website – which was created to support a healthy eating initiative in the form of a new front-of-pack rating system – was pulled down only eight hours after it was officially launched.
A spokesperson for the health department said that the website was a draft’, and made live in “an inadvertent error”, claims that were widely refuted by public health groups who say that the website was pulled down due to industry influence.
The guardian reports that Furnival ordered that the website be taken down, and reached out to the Department of Health’s senior ranks when staff initially refused to take the site offline.
The new health star front-of-pack labelling system, which has been developed over the past two and a half years, attracted criticism from industry bodies, including the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) and major food manufacturers. The system gives food and beverage products a rating out of five based on nutritional content.
Michael Moore, chief executive of the Public Health Association said that the he was ‘appalled and shocked’ when the site taken down.
“There is clearly politics but we just want to get the website back up. We have a voluntary code that some parts of the industry wants to get up,” said Moore.
“This was a system in place ready to go and some influence had been brought to bear to bring it down.”