Labor Waste

Media Release – Senator David Johnston

The Department of Defence has spent $600,000 on a seven-day audit into a tender process for a lucrative aviation contract which was awarded under highly dubious circumstances and the result is little more than an incredibly expensive whitewash.

Defence had a preferred tenderer for the contract to fly personnel to the Middle East but after a complaint was made about the integrity of the process Defence engaged Deloitte to look into the matter.

Shadow Defence Minister David Johnston today said Deloitte even admitted in its report there was a number of limitations in its scope of inquiry and they didn’t even interview any of the tenderers or verify the information provided by Defence personnel involved in the tender.

“Deloitte conducted what should have been a very important inquiry into a number of very serious allegations that go to the core of accountability and integrity of the public service – effectively with one hand tied behind their back,” Senator Johnston said.

“For close to $100,000 a day the auditor barely looked under his mouse pad.”

“The result is as predictable as night follows day, of course it didn’t find any evidence of mismanagement or corruption because they weren’t allowed to look for it, and the taxpayers who paid for this audit have a right to know why.”

The $100 million aviation contract in question was awarded to a company that owns no planes, employs few Australians and brokers a Portuguese charter operator, who does not provide Regular Public Transport operations – a minimum requirement under the tender specifications. 

Questions have also been raised about a former aviation entrepreneur who was working in the Defence Department during the tender process who then took a job with the company that won the contract.

“The person in question was not interviewed by Deloitte and in fact their audit was limited to reading documents, interviews and listening to interviews performed by others – presumably within the Department,” Senator Johnston said.

Senator Johnston said on top of this was a compromised Price Waterhouse report on the allegations that Defence won’t declare the cost of, as well as an internal investigation from the AGS costing $77,000.

“Defence has spent close to $1 million effectively investigating itself and the entire process has done nothing to inspire confidence in the integrity of Defence contracts,”

Senator Johnston raised the issue in Senate Question Time and the Minister representing the Minister for Defence was not only poorly briefed but was completely dismissive of this scandalous whitewash and waste of taxpayers’ money.

Source: Costly defence whitewash proves nothing – Liberal Party of Australia.

Do you have your own story of Labor's waste, inefficiency and mismanagement of taxpayer's money? Hold them to account and tell us on the Tip-Off page.