Leak this!

It's quite interesting, the more you look the more you find. Remember a couple of days ago (surely you can remember that far back) when I posted about the leaking of an internal investigation into CMA funding that looked suspiciously like an attempt to smear CMAs and their staff? Well, I saw today that Mick Keogh of the Australian Farm Institute has been engaged to undertake some public consultation:
 

Mick Keogh, Director Australian Farm Institute, has undertaken independent targeted consultation during November in Armidale, Tamworth, Griffith and Wagga Wagga, and with LHPA State Council and Policy Council, NSW Farmers Western Division (including Council and CMA) and CMA Chairs.

Now, is this part of his official duties as a member of the reference panel or has it been contracted and if so what was the process? So I dug a little further, finding the immediate past chair of the AFI is none other than the current chair of the Natural Resources Commission, Dr John Keniry (something absent from his profile on the NRC website, though mentioned in the annual report) and with a fair whack of the AFI's income (p21 annual report) coming from corporate membership (NSW Farmers, MLA, Westpac Agribusiness, Pfizer, Landmark, Commonwealth Bank, Monsanto etc) it could hardly be described as independent nor representative of most of the landholders CMA, DPI and LHPA staff deal with.