Most of the Group's business was in plantation forestry to supply woodchips for the pulp and paper industry, but in the 2000s it diversified into high-value timbers, beef cattle, olives, viticulture, and almond production.

[3] The collapse of Great Southern Group, in conjunction with the failure of another high-profile agribusiness company, Timbercorp, led to three separate Australian parliamentary committee inquiries into the MIS industry.

[15] A typical forestry investment in the early 2000s involved an initial payment of $3,000 for one-third of a hectare woodlot, yielding a $2,900 tax deduction at that time.

[26][27][28][29][30][31] Young was Great Southern's Executive chairman when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 1999, and co-founder Sewell remained in a full-time role until her retirement in February 2001.

[43] In 2005 Great Southern expanded into organic olives, acquired some existing beef cattle MIS businesses,[44] and bought forest products company Sylvatech, including its $700 million of assets.

[43] Although the company continued to sell over $800 million of MIS products in the two financial years after incurring losses on its early offerings, it was not meeting sales targets,[18] and its share price was falling.

[43] Underpinning Great Southern's decision to subsidise returns to its early investors was a looming problem: its forestry plantations were not performing to expectations.

[15] Great Southern's baseline projection had been 250 tonnes of woodchips per hectare, but an assessment in 2003 suggested that in most plantations yield would be reduced: in some cases to less than half the planned figure.

[18] Saying that he wanted someone younger to implement the company's five-year business plans,[19] he handed over to Cameron Rhodes, one of Great Southern's existing senior management team.

Industry sectors in which investment occurred included beef cattle, forestry, wine grapes, almonds, and poultry production.

[9] The Group developed a proposal, known as Project Transform, to restructure the business, in particular through seeking the agreement of investors to swap their MIS investments for shares in Great Southern Limited.

[65] By 2009, the global economic downturn, and regulatory uncertainty associated with MIS schemes, was putting the company under financial pressure, and it was seeking to improve its situation both through asset sales and refinancing of debt.

[72] By early 2009, business analysts Lonsec Agribusiness Research considered Great Southern to be financially stressed, and that it was "hard to envisage a rapid turnaround in the outlook" for the company.

They gave Great Southern as managers the second-lowest rating on their assessment scale, just short of stating that the investment would be "detrimental to an investor's...portfolio".

[71] Great Southern's attempts to extract itself from financial trouble were unsuccessful and by May 2009, when a trading halt was called, the company's shares were worth just 12 cents.

[77] By April 2010, timber company Gunns had taken over as the responsible entity running most of Great Southern's pulpwood schemes, but the land on which they were being grown was yet to be sold.

[79] It was also noted that, at the time that difficulties were emerging for Great Southern, its CEO sold some of his shares at the top of the companies' fortunes for $32.6 million.

[86] Great Southern and its nearest industry rival Timbercorp were estimated as having 43 per cent of all managed investment schemes (MIS) business in Australia.

[87] The schemes were intended to overcome failures in the market for risk,[87] and in the area of forestry reflect the fact that Australia has always subsidised plantation development.

[92] The company was paying commissions of ten percent – high by industry standards, and similar to those paid by other failed investment businesses including Westpoint Corporation and Storm Financial.

[94] These practices had been questioned for several years by the corporate regulator ASIC and some market analysts,[89] and were widely criticised following Great Southern's collapse.

Great Southern managed the woodlot, and the investor could deduct the cost of the lease from the income they declared that year for tax assessment purposes.

[15][93][96] The tax-driven nature of investment in the sector made it vulnerable to policy changes and court rulings interpreting tax law.

He also held the federal seat of O'Connor in Western Australia, which included much of the Great Southern region and significant areas of plantation forests.

[15] In the lead up to the 2007 federal election, Great Southern made $40,000 of donations to the Labor opposition, including $10,000 two days after the release of the party's primary industries policy.

[116][118][120] Complaints were made that Great Southern Group's 2005 acquisition, Sylvatech, was conducting clearing and plantation activities in breach of environmental conditions set by the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

[93][129] The failure of MIS schemes for these reasons was predicted in 2008 by Ajani, who argued that "we know that investment driven by the demand for tax minimisation, and not market realities, is associated with collapse".

[93] An AFR journalist wrote, "as a general rule, MIS industries are inherently doomed to fail both from an investment and a social good perspective ... Taxpayers should ... not be surprised that they continue to fall over".

[132] The $23 million settlement, flagged in July, resolves a class action by 2000 investors led by Macpherson and Kelley Lawyers and targeting Bendigo & Adelaide Bank's involvement in Great Southern's schemes.

The class action had sought to void more than $300 million of loans taken out with Bendigo and Javelin Asset Management to fund the schemes on the basis that investors were misled by Great Southern, which collapsed five years ago.