The wind-up cost raises further questions as to why the senator chose to cut the council's funding on the grounds she could no longer afford to provide for the organisation, which had been funded for almost 50 years. "It was dumb advising dumber - dumb won": Former ADCA president Mal Washer. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Senator Nash was censured in Parliament this month for misleading the Senate and refusing to produce documentation outlining how her chief of staff was allowed to continue working for her despite co-owning a company that had worked for the alcohol and junk food industries. Dr Washer, who has resigned because he says the lack of funding made his position untenable, said the decision was ''a bloody tragedy''. ''This wasn't subject to any review . . . it was dumb advising dumber, and dumb won,'' he said. He believed that once the building and other assets were sold there could still be a shortfall of money needed to pay off costs.

One of the council's major functions is to provide a library and resource service for people working in the drug and alcohol sector. That service will now be considered as part of a $45,000 review of drug and alcohol funding Senator Nash implemented after her decision. Curtin University professor of public health Mike Daube said it was unclear whether the funding had been cut through a ''stuff-up, a conspiracy or both''. ''ADCA was a high priority organisation, and they will have to reinvent it at some stage, but with at least a million dollars wasted along the way,'' he said. ''If they quite rightly think this [library] is important, why did they scrap ADCA before they had worked out how to keep it going?'' Labor health spokeswoman Catherine King said the government had been driven by ideology rather than sound policy. According to the administrator's documents, the organisation reached a settlement with the Department of Health ''as a result of its decision to defund the company without notice'' for $697,790.

There have also been more than $250,000 in administrator's fees either approved or sought so far. Loading Senator Nash did not respond to questions about whether this was an efficient use of taxpayer funding. However, she told Senate Estimates that she made the decision because there was duplication between ADCA and other agencies, and proper funding arrangements had not been put in place under the previous Labor government. Follow us on Twitter