Ex-SAS man tipped as prisons chief
A former commanding officer of the elite Special Air Service Regiment and West Coast Eagles board member is poised to take the reins of the troubled Department of Corrective Services.
James McMahon, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan during his 24-year military career and more recently helped turn around the Eagles' off-field cultural problems, is the firm frontrunner to be Corrective Services commissioner as early as next week.
Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis, a former Royal Australian Navy submariner, has made known his wish to instil a higher level of discipline in his department, which has been without a commissioner since Ian Johnson was removed in April.
Mr McMahon is set to inherit a department beset by governance problems.
It failed to heed internal warnings of a brewing riot at the Banksia Hill juvenile detention facility, which erupted in January and has been plagued by personnel problems including absenteeism, bikie links and bullying.
A breakdown in trust between the minister and workforce culminated in an unannounced inspection of Hakea Prison by Mr Francis in July and the moving of a motion of no-confidence in him by youth custodial officers last month.
Mr McMahon has confronted troublesome cultural problems in the past, having been credited with spearheading much of the Eagles' recovery from the 2007 Ben Cousins drug saga as head of the club's core values committee.
He retired from the army in 2009 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In recent years, Mr McMahon was appointed to the security committee for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth in 2011 as he carved out a corporate niche on St Georges Terrace.
Mr McMahon is managing director of personal development and business strategy firm Chauvel Group and chief operating officer of corporate advisers Azure Capital.
His appointment would add to the number of ex-uniformed figures surrounding Mr Francis.
The minister's chief-of-staff Steve Barton served as an army intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Emergency Services Commissioner Wayne Gregson was an assistant police commissioner.
