The Defence Department has agreed to publish the resignation letter of one of its former top executives, but only after heavily censoring his comments about another public servant.
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Former Defence Materiel Organisation chief executive Stephen Gumley resigned on July 6, giving just one day's notice.
He had been in the job for 7 years and was one of Australia's highest-paid bureaucrats.
In his letter to the department's then secretary, Ian Watt, Dr Gumley said he was proud of leading the organisation through ''a period of significant and unprecedented systematic change''.
A copy of the document was sought under freedom of information law two weeks after Dr Gumley resigned.
But the department censored about half of the letter before making it public, saying it referred to another former bureaucrat's confidential financial and work details.
A Defence FoI executive, Tony Corcoran, said revealing Dr Gumley's comments would ''involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information'' about the unnamed individual. Dr Gumley's letter also referred to flak he had weathered during his term, saying the role was ''quite likely unparalleled in the public sector in terms of the difficulty and challenges it faces, especially the commerciality required''.
Critics have attacked the agency, which buys equipment for the military, for several high-profile failures, including the burgeoning costs of the air force's joint strike fighters.
Dr Gumley also sacked one of his executives, Jane Wolfe, in March 2009, because of her allegedly poor performance, only for the Federal Court to overturn the dismissal last year. That case cost taxpayers about $1.3 million.
Dr Gumley wrote in his resignation letter, ''... the vast majority of projects and products the DMO is responsible for are delivered within their budgets and to required capability, and the time frames are not worse than those of like countries.'' The department's 2010-11 annual report shows Dr Gumley was paid $590,029 last financial year, as well as a $81,550 bonus.