Australians love to think they live in the "lucky country", with ample everything. But one thing many are oblivious to, the lucky country with ample everything is always broke and the cause for it. You could say it's like a 3rd world country, with ample resources but broke due to possible shady kickbacks to possible shady politicians, where the trickle down effect is exactly that, a trickle. I think its about time to apply the blowtorch to some of the shennigans.
Opinion Scandal has stuck to Morrison, but offshore truths could hit home for Dutton Peter Hartcher Political and international editor July 29, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/national/sca...ould-hit-home-for-dutton-20230726-p5drh9.html The web of investigations and recriminations over the conduct of the former Coalition government is about to expand. And while they’ve mostly centred on Scott Morrison to date, the next inquiry will put Peter Dutton under scrutiny. The former Liberal leader starred in the “secret ministries” inquiry and the robo-debt royal commission. The current Liberal leader is expected to face an inquiry into events during his time as minister of the Home Affairs Department and as minister for its precursor, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Scott Morrison and successor Peter Dutton in 2018.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen The Albanese government is in the process of establishing an independent inquiry into this week’s revelations about the management of the department. The government is expected to make an announcement as soon as Monday, pending cabinet endorsement. If it proceeds as intended, it’ll begin the new parliamentary sitting fortnight with a bang. The revelations were made in the Home Truths series of articles by investigative reporters at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes. The articles by Michael Bachelard, Nick McKenzie and Amelia Ballinger raise apparent malpractice in two of the department’s responsibilities: One is systemic abuse of the visa system by criminal gangs; the other is dubious payments for the letting of contracts to run Australia’s offshore immigration processing and detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The most politically sensational of the reports? That the Australian Federal Police told Dutton as home affairs minister in July 2018 that an Australian businessman was under investigation for bribery, and that Dutton’s department awarded the same man’s company a multi-million-dollar government contract a month later. The contract signed by the businessman, Sydney-based Mozammil Bhojani, ultimately paid his company Radiance International $9.3 million in Australian taxpayer money. Its purpose was to provide accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru. “Just one month after the contract was signed, police arrested Bhojani and charged him with paying more than $100,000 in bribes to two Nauruan officials,” write Bachelard and McKenzie. Bhojani pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2020. The reporters add: “There is no suggestion that Dutton himself played a part in signing the contracts.” Dutton has been on leave for the past fortnight and declined to respond. Other Coalition members defended Dutton, saying that he played no part in the letting of contracts by the department. But Anthony Albanese pounced on what he described as “serious allegations”. The prime minister said: “This is taxpayers’ money and Mr Dutton has a responsibility to explain what occurred on his watch as home affairs minister with this scandal.” The Coalition’s defence of Morrison during recent inquisitions has been lukewarm; he’s now a backbencher, politically failed and an embarrassment, and on his way out of parliament. The defence of Dutton, however, as the movement’s leader, will be much more spirited. The Liberal leadership makes the point that, before Dutton was minister, Labor ministers operated in the same way in the portfolio, playing no part in awarding contracts. So they are pursuing him as a political stunt, runs the argument. For Labor, the allegations are a political gift to keep pressure on the Coalition and to put Dutton on the defensive. For the Greens and the teal independents, it’s an opportunity to remind voters that they campaigned on integrity as a key theme. The Greens were the first of the political parties to call for a federal anti-corruption commission; this week they called for a royal commission into Home Affairs. A brace of teals – Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender, Zali Steggall and Kylea Tink – also demanded a public inquiry. The particular Bhojani incident was one part of a much broader set of systemic concerns. As McKenzie, Bachelard and Amelia Ballinger wrote this week: “Australia’s Home Affairs Department oversaw the payment of millions of taxpayer dollars to powerful Pacific Island politicians through a chain of suspect contracts as it sought to maintain controversial offshore asylum seeker processing centres. “Financial data, internal emails and whistleblower testimony implicate Home Affairs’ lead contractors – Broadspectrum, Canstruct and Paladin – in suspected systemic misuse of taxpayer dollars in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.” Some of the biggest and most lucrative contracts were let without competitive tender. At least one of these three lead contractors was a Liberal Party donor – Brisbane-based Canstruct, which was paid $1.82 billion in taxpayer funds over five years to run the Nauru centre. The relationship between Canstruct and the Liberals is expected to come under close Labor attention in parliament. One Liberal MP, Tasmania’s Bridget Archer, crossed the party line in calling for an independent inquiry into the allegations: “I certainly think they are very serious revelations and warrant further inquiry,” said Archer. It was “critical that there is trust and integrity in government contracts”. The chair of the Centre for Public Integrity, former NSW Court of Appeal judge Anthony Whealy, says that the government “is right to hold an independent inquiry”, but he adds a key caveat. “At the moment all that’s been revealed looks bad for the Coalition, but I’m not sure that it reveals what we’d normally call corruption,” says Whealy, one of the original campaigners for a national anti-corruption commission. The Greens will pledge to abolish Australian Border Force.Credit: Wolter Peeters “Maybe it shows Home Affairs asleep at the wheel, maybe it shows Home Affairs turning a blind eye, but clearly it warrants closer examination. If there’s anything worse uncovered, that could be referred to the NACC,” the spanking-new National Anti-Corruption Commission, whose commission took effect this month. He makes the point that there’s a rich backlog of material already on the NACC commissioner’s desk. For instance, just this week, the chief fundraiser for a Morrison cabinet minister, Stuart Robert, left the country and “severed all ties” rather than face a parliamentary committee on Friday to answer some tough questions about his dealings with Robert. As for Robert himself, a close ally of Morrison’s and a fellow member of the Morrison parliamentary prayer group, he quit parliament in May. An independent inquiry into Home Affairs and this week’s revelations, says Anthony Whealy, might generate enough extra material to “make a referral to the NACC much more formidable. If it refers for investigation payments through Nauru and PNG, that may generate material – it’s not enough for Home Affairs to say ‘we didn’t have relationships with the sub-contractors’. I think they had an ethical and certainly a moral obligation to ensure that enormous sums like these are handled correctly and not used in any way that’s illegal.” As for the specific Bhojani incident and the $9.3 million contract, says Whealy, “on the face of it, it was turning a blind eye to something that required a much more vigilant degree of oversight” rather than evidence of corruption. Beyond any alleged malpractice in the management of the offshore detention centres, the Home Truths series exposed systemic, criminal abuse of the visa system. As part of the series, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published online, in full, a confidential report for the federal government by the former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon. Nixon found what she describes as “grotesque abuses” of the visa system, with temporary migrants the victims. One example, exposed by the Home Truths series, was the muscling in by Albanian organised criminal syndicates: “State and federal law enforcement officials have issued repeated warnings in confidential reports circulated to Home Affairs that the Albanian mafia has strategically rorted the migration system for more than a decade to build powerful criminal enterprises,” write the investigative reporters. “Secret policing intelligence links the Albanian mafia to shootings or suspicious deaths in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, large-scale drug importations and money laundering.” The Nixon report makes a series of recommendations for repairing the system. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil had already declared that the visa system for temporary workers was “broken” – “all the rules that we use to decide who comes in and who doesn’t aren’t working,” she told this masthead. O’Neil is working on a comprehensive reform of the visa system, expected to be announced in October. It will include policy responses to the Nixon report. But while the policy repair work goes on quietly in the background, the political cut and thrust of an inquiry – another one – into the Coalition years will rage in the foreground. That’s just another home truth. Peter Hartcher is political editor.
When you see 'officials' wearing white (honesty) shirts, you need to immediately become suspicious. Humans are so gullible.
Opinion Australia is finally waking up to the 'Big Con' Hearings on PwC's leakage of tax plans have uncovered shocking web of conflicts Chris Wallace June 11, 2023 https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Australia-is-finally-waking-up-to-the-Big-Con Andrew Yates, CEO of KPMG Australia, testifies in Canberra on June 7 at a Senate hearing related to the PwC tax scandal. (AAP) Chris Wallace is a professor of political history at the University of Canberra and author of the new book "Political Lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers." When former general Dwight D. Eisenhower was wrapping up his final term as U.S. president in 1961, he warned Americans to guard against the influence of the "military-industrial complex." Across the Pacific, Australians are now learning of the perils of what could be called the consulting-industrial complex as Senate hearings reveal just how deeply the country's "Big Seven" accounting and advisory companies are enmeshed with the federal government. For months the story now crystallizing concern was a slow-burning affair but in recent weeks it has become a conflagration, highlighting the risks created by confidential consultations with, and the bulk outsourcing of traditional public service functions to, commercial advisories. The scandal edged just barely into public view two days before Christmas last year, a time when many Australians go on long beach vacations. The obscure Tax Practitioners Board quietly posted online its decision to deregister PwC tax partner Peter Collins for two years. Collins, the agency said, had used "confidential knowledge he gained from consultations with Treasury" which PwC then "leveraged to market PwC to a new client base." The timing of the announcement made clear that it was not intended to be noticed. It also omitted key details, namely that Collins in 2015 had shared specifics of government plans to get multinationals to pay their fair share of tax with more than 50 PwC colleagues and that the firm then aggressively marketed tax avoidance advice to exactly the kinds of companies the government was targeting. So far, only one consultant who has since left PwC has been punished in the scandal over the use of government secrets to help clients avoid tax. PwC itself has not been. © Reuters In late January, a small article by a journalist who happened upon the board notice made barely a ripple at first. But as others followed, Sen. Deborah O'Neill began to ask pointed questions of the Australian Taxation Office, the Treasury and the Tax Practitioners Board. Greens Sen. Barbara Pocock, a former academic like O'Neill, joined in the questioning at committee hearings. Before long, both the public service and PwC were reeling as O'Neill and Pocock uncovered a vast and shocking web of conflicted interests arising from years of government and the consulting industry metaphorically getting into bed with each other. It is a seemingly textbook case of what British academics Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington wrote about in their recent book, "The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies." "Because what we've got here is a company which took government secrets, provided in good faith in the interests of consultation, and sold that to clients," Treasurer Jim Chalmers said of the scandal. He declared himself "absolutely filthy" about PwC's behavior -- Australian slang for very unhappy indeed. The Senate investigation has highlighted the audacity of PwC's wrongdoing, how many government agencies knew about it, how confident PwC was about escaping punishment, and how little, how late and how hidden the sanction was. So far, only Collins, who has since left PwC, has been punished. To date, PwC itself has not been. The Tax Practitioners Board that banned Collins for a mere two years includes two ex-PwC consultants whose pensions are tied to PwC's profitability. The pair, though, recused themselves from direct involvement in the Collins decision. In the wake of the Senate's hearings, a resident of Bondi Beach wrote a letter to the editor about the disclosure that the Reserve Bank of Australia had hired PwC at a cost of 300,000 to 400,000 Australian dollars ($202,000 to $267,000) to help it calculate underpayments owed to central bank staff. "Humiliating empirical evidence of just how beholden to the consultants the public sector has become," wrote the complainant, noting that the RBA is full of numerate Ph.D.s who in the past could have "put a recent graduate on such a task, with some direction." PwC, by the way, is on retainer as an auditor for both the RBA and the Australian Treasury. But its name is now tainted in Canberra, and some government departments, newly authorized to take character and past behavior into account when awarding contracts, are shunning the firm while it is under a cloud. The Reserve Bank of Australia hired PwC at a cost of 300,000 to 400,000 Australian dollars to help it calculate underpayments owed to central bank staff. © Reuters The brand damage for PwC is spilling over into the private sector. Three major Australian pension funds have said they will not engage the firm in the future. PwC's betrayal could well have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that would otherwise have been collected under the 2015 Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law. The urgent question in Canberra now is how government can reverse out of its pervasive enmeshment with consultants, who are more expensive than public service employees and, as the PwC case shows, always come with dubious entanglements since generating ever more consulting income is a permanent commercial imperative. The unwinding is not going to be easy. The previous Liberal-National coalition government that left office last year boasted of capping the size of the civil service but concealed how a vast shadow workforce from the consulting firms was doing the work of public servants and often sitting alongside them in government offices. A freshly released government audit calculated this shadow workforce at 53,911 for the fiscal year that ended in June 2021, compared to an official public service workforce of 144,271. The revolving door by which departing ministers and other public servants move to consulting firms to work on topics for which they were recently responsible is notorious but now routine. It also works in the other direction, with several former consultants now serving in parliament. This too will add to the challenge of finding a way through the conflicts and ethical compromises that the Big Seven's massive inroads into core public functions of Australian government represent. Australia's National Anti-Corruption Commission, which starts work next month, has a lot of catching up to do.
NSW minister sacked for ‘conflict of interest over family holdings’ By Max Maddison, Michael McGowan and Carrie Fellner In case you missed it, NSW Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education Minister Tim Crakanthorp was sacked yesterday and referred to the corruption watchdog for a significant breach of the ministerial code. This was because he failed to disclose “substantial” private family holdings. NSW Premier Chris Minns speaks during a snap press conference yesterday. Credit: Dion Georgopoulos In a media conference yesterday afternoon, Premier Chris Minns asked Crakanthorp for his resignation after he became aware earlier in the day that the Newcastle MP and Minister for the Hunter had breached the ministerial code. “As a result of that conversation, I’ve asked him to resign his commission as a minister, and he has agreed to do that,” Minns said. “I’ve lost confidence in his ability to be a minister in my government.”
OPINION Why Trumpism failed here, despite Morrison giving it a red-hot go Peter Hartcher Political and international editor August 5, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...n-giving-it-a-red-hot-go-20230802-p5dtc5.html Bill Shorten uses question time to berate him for his robo-debt policywhich the royal commission into the scandal damned as “a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals”. Trumpism is besieged yet thriving in America, disgraced and dead in Australia. Morrison was not the only Trump-wannabe in Australia. Remember the Coalition backbenchers George Christensen and Craig Kelly, anti-vax and pro-coal? Both gone. You can, however, find a couple of Trumpist fringe-dwellers in the Senate, noticed only by Sky News. The current Coalition leader, Peter Dutton, may be unpopular but he is not Trumpian. Trump is a wrecker, a populist demagogue and a destructive fantasist; Dutton is an old-school opposition leader, obstructionist and negative, but inhabiting reality and respecting rules and institutions. Why is Trump and Trumpism still a force in the US yet failed in Australia? “Australia is pulling back from this brink of a populist moment,” says Katrina Lee-Koo, a professor of politics and international relations at Monash University. “Trumpism is typified by lack of process, a lack of value on checks and balances and political and constitutional processes. I think, in Australia, we see a new government willingness to work through processes. In Australia, there’s a pulling back from hyperbole. You still see hyperbole in the US, not only from Trump but other candidates. “I don’t think populism is accelerating in the US but it hasn’t gone away – the persistence of Trump’s popularity in spite of three indictments now suggests that populism is widespread.” Is it populism or Trumpism? I define populism as a political style offering unworkably simple solutions to complex problems. Which is an essential part of Trumpism. For example, COVID would “go away without a vaccine”, Trump would “eliminate” the federal deficit and Kim Jong Un would abandon his nuclear weapons once he’d had a meeting with Trump. These are just a few of many, all absurdly unattainable and none attained. Trump is a populist, no question. But Trump is more and Trumpism is bigger. It’s a personality cult. But what is that personality? “Trump plays the roles of the saviour, the hater, and the clown – the trifecta of entertainment in contemporary American life,” says US psychotherapist Tom Bissonette. “The builder and the wrecking ball rolled into one. He is the outlet for those who perceive themselves as overlooked. He is the champion of the ‘what about me’ guys.” In other words, Trumpism is an expression of American disillusionment. It’s the disappointment of a middle class betrayed. Inequality is shocking, despair is deep, opioids are easier than belief in an American dream. Trump’s supporters might not see him actually solving the nation’s big problems, but they know he’s not going to let the other guys off easily. If you’ve really despaired of solutions, then revenge, or schadenfreude perhaps, will do. Remember his boast that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”? Well,a jury found in a civil case that he raped the journalist E. Jean Carroll. Yet Trump led the field of Republican contenders for the presidency with 54 per cent of Republican voter support, according toThe New York Timespollpublished the day before his indictment this week for obstructing the peaceful transfer of power at the 2020 election. All other contenders were in a different political universe: next was Florida governor Ron DeSantis with 17 per cent, and all the others enjoyed support of 3 per cent of less. What about after the bombshell indictment? Three days later, aReuters-Ipsos pollgave Trump a slightly smaller lead of 47 to DeSantis’s 13 among Republican voters, yet still had him in a commanding position. Is it still a bombshell if it goes off and no one is hurt? Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.CREDIT: Trumpism died in Australia yet thrives in the US for five reasons. First, the objective living conditions of the people are different. Inequality, for instance, is far starker in the US. Australians have gripes, of course, but a sense of hopelessness has settled on much of America in a way that just hasn’t happened in Australia. Second, the US is a much more divided society along cultural lines as well as economic: “The big divisions on race and gender are much more pronounced in the US than in Australia,” says Lee-Koo. Third? “We see increasing political polarisation in the US,” says Emma Doyle, a former deputy chief of staff to Trump. “It’s a reflection of the US political divide – it’s front-of-mind every day in a way that it’s not here,” she told me during a visit to Australia this week in her capacity as managing director of Bondi Partners, Joe Hockey’s US-Australia business advisory firm. “How do you feel about what the other party is doing today – the Democrats are holding hearings into this today, and Republicans are holding hearings into that. Here in Australia, the government has policies and is implementing them. You have your opinion about that,” but it’s not a minute-by-minute struggle to the death, every day, she says. Trump started as a symptom, and now is also a cause, of these American phenomena of disillusionment and despair, social division and political polarisation. But Scott Morrison didn’t emerge from this American economic, cultural and political ecosystem. He was not Trump. He was merely trying on Trump’s political clothing for a thrill. But there are two other big, systemic and institutional reasons that Trumpist populism and demagoguery don’t work in Australia and never will. One is compulsory voting. So long as 90 per cent of the people vote, political parties can’t win by appealing to extremes. They must appeal to the political centre. This is an inbuilt protection that keeps Australian politics sane. The other is an independent electoral mechanism. The Australian Electoral Commission is an apolitical and independent umpire. It enjoys a great deal of credibility. In the US, electoral boundaries are drawn up by the states, and in most states they’re drawn by the political officeholders of the day. This has created chronic gerrymandering. Similarly, US election polling and counting is conducted by the states and mostly controlled by the political officeholders of the day. This fosters suspicion. In Australia, everyone abides by the umpire’s decision. Including Scott Morrison, who acknowledged the election results unhesitatingly. In the US, there is no independent umpire. Trumpism wasn’t an Australian outfit; it was an American fashion that we tried on briefly, but shrugged off and left on fitting room floor. Together with the prime minister who modelled it for us. Peter Hartcher is political and international editor.
Consulting firm KPMG overcharged Defence while raking in billions of dollars, whistleblowers say Four Corners/ By Angus Grigg, Jessica Longbottom, Jonathan Miller and Maddison Connaughton Posted 3 hours ago https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-07/kpmg-consultants-overcharging-defence-four-corners/102644518 Two whistleblowers say KPMG was awarded work from the department with little scrutiny.(Four Corners: Nick Wiggins) Consulting giant KPMG has been accused by two whistleblowers of repeatedly ripping off taxpayers while contracted by the Department of Defence — submitting inflated invoices and billing the federal government for hours never worked. Key points: The whistleblowers worked at KPMG and the Department of Defence They say the government was charged for work never done and jobs not needed There are warnings that the use of consultants in government is wasting money and damaging accountability The whistleblowers – one from KPMG, the other from Defence – told Four Corners the ongoing cosy relationship meant new work was awarded with little scrutiny, allowing KPMG to charge the department a staggering $1.8 billion over the past decade. One whistleblower said KPMG had "significant influence" over senior Defence staff. "What I don't hear is anybody calling it for what it is … an abuse of privilege and power," said Labor senator Deborah O'Neill, who has played a key role in the parliamentary inquiry that is examining the "big four" consulting firms: PwC, KPMG, EY and Deloitte. While PwC has attracted headlines over its use of confidential government information to help its clients avoid tax, there has been less scrutiny of one of Canberra's biggest players: KPMG. Defence is its number one government client. The department accounts for more than two-thirds of KPMG's government business.(Four Corners) 'Every invoice reviewed was incorrect' The whistleblower who previously worked for the department said KPMG proposed $1 million worth of new work that was already covered by existing contracts. And that was just on one project over a seven-month period. About the same time, the whistleblower claimed personal connections helped KPMG land a $14 million contract for a defence logistics project — despite it being the most expensive tender option. Within 12 months, KPMG had reaped $4 million from contract extensions. In the consulting world, it is known as "land and expand". "It's about getting very, very close to government, finding out what's going on using the contacts, and then growing the business," Senator O'Neill said. "The whole business model of these companies is 'billable hours'; the longer they stay there, the less efficiently they do the job." Senator Deborah O'Neill played a key role in the parliamentary inquiry examining the "big four" consulting firms.(Four Corners) Since 2013, work KPMG won was initially valued at $1.7 billion but ended up costing the federal government more than $2.6 billion. The whistleblower said while they worked for Defence, repeated financial errors favouring KPMG were discovered and the firm agreed to cut its fees. That prompted the whistleblower to audit KPMG's earlier invoices. "We discovered that every KPMG invoice reviewed was incorrect … Defence had been consistently overcharged," they said in a statutory declaration. KPMG charged for work never completed and even billed for a consultant who had not worked on a project, they added. "KPMG … wasted a significant amount of public funds, enabled by Defence personnel who had been complicit in blindly awarding multiple contact extensions to KPMG … with little or no scrutiny." The whistleblower said part of the problem was the influence that the KPMG consultants — most of them former Defence Force members — had over their former colleagues. Defence dismissed many of the allegations after an investigation in 2016, despite the whistleblower providing "substantial written documentation" including emails and financial reports. The whistleblower said they were eventually forced to leave Defence. Defence said it complies with Commonwealth procurement policy and legislative frameworks to ensure all procurements represent an efficient, effective, ethical and economic use of Commonwealth funds. "As a core principle of this framework, procurements made in relation to consulting services must represent value for money." 'Just plain dishonest' A second whistleblower levelled further allegations, including that KPMG told staff to bill Defence for work not done. "I was instructed to record time spent on internal projects against Defence codes," he said. The whistleblower said in his opinion: "It's just plain dishonest." He worked for KPMG on Defence contracts for two years up until 2020 and has no connection to the other whistleblower. The man contacted the KPMG whistleblowers' hotline.(Four Corners) He said KPMG was also doing work for Defence that ultimately was not needed. "KPMG was simply happy, in my view, to propose these new works, get them signed off, and reap the financial benefits," he said. "I think KPMG, in my experience, are absolutely prepared to break the rules … to work in ways that would be unacceptable in normal business, to win more business from the Commonwealth. And ultimately, it's taxpayers who are paying for this." Despite being warned that his career would suffer, he contacted the KPMG whistleblowers' hotline. His contract was not renewed. KPMG said it could not find any evidence to support claims made about improper billing of Defence. "Before invoices are issued or paid … there is a formal process of extensive checks and balances involving both parties," it said. "If there were any errors … they would be … corrected before payment." KPMG said the whistleblower's complaints had nothing to do with his contract not being renewed. Creating a 'storm front' of work The KPMG whistleblower also raised concerns about the firm's attitude to people it recruited straight from Defence. According to figures compiled by Four Corners, over the past five years, KPMG hired almost 100 people who previously worked at Defence. Department of Defence personnel have been recruited to work for the consultancy.(Four Corners) To avoid senior Defence staff using inside knowledge when they join the private sector, a "cooling-off" period is often agreed to. In 2019, KPMG recruited senior Defence official Peter Corcoran to run its government cybersecurity business, with the proviso of not being able to work with Defence for one year. Six months into the job, a senior partner congratulated Mr Corcoran in an email titled "Chocks away", telling staff he was creating a "storm front of work" in other parts of government. The email acknowledged "Peter has a further 6-month ban from working directly within Defence", but just two paragraphs later it said: "Peter continues to meet Defence personnel on the 'side', maintaining relationships and building new relationships." Mr Corcoran and KPMG said: "There was no breach of the contractual cooling-off period." 'Consultants are everywhere' Australia's spending on consultants is among the highest in the world. Australian governments have paid the big four firms a staggering $10 billion over the past decade. They are meant to fill gaps in specialist knowledge and work on urgent projects but they are increasingly doing jobs traditionally carried out by public servants. The explosion in consultant numbers followed a cull of 15,000 public servants after the Abbott government came to office in 2013. "It's absolutely pervasive," said Chris Wallace, a government historian at the University of Canberra. "Consultants are everywhere and it's happened at such a rapid clip in recent years. "The consultants are pretty much feasting on the public service." Chris Wallace says the use of consultants is "pervasive" in the public service.(Four Corners) Greens senator Barbara Pocock has used parliamentary inquiries to go after the big consultants and has spearheaded the push against PwC. "We find big consultant partners peppered across Australian government departments," Senator Pocock said. "They're in the senior leadership teams in agriculture, in the federal police, in finance, they're auditors internally for a wide range of government departments." Senator Pocock said not only have taxpayers been ripped off, but the push to have more consultants has degraded accountability. "They're not exposed to [Senate] estimates … So a whole lot of the key transparency devices and tools for our parliament are prevented from really looking at the big spend on consultants," she said. "And you have to ask, is one of the intentions of moving so much of the government spend outside the public view a deliberate strategy to give certain governments cover for what they want to do and certainly to help their friends?" The Albanese government has pledged to cut its spending on consultants and contractors by $3.1 billion over the next four years. Yesterday, it announced that as part of a broader crackdown on tax avoidance, Treasury was being tasked with conducting a whole-of-government review into systemic issues raised by the PwC scandal, including an "examination of the regulation of consulting, accounting and auditing firms and whether reforms are needed". And the new head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, Paul Brereton, has indicated consultants are squarely in his sights. He told a closed-door seminar last month he expects them to "attract considerable interest from the commission".
Boats stopped, the money didn’t: How Liberal donor made $442m in five years By Michael Bachelard and Nick McKenzie August 11, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...-made-442m-in-five-years-20230809-p5dv2v.html Australian company Canstruct was paid more than $300 million by the federal government to care for refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru last financial year, even as the number of people on the island dwindled to a few dozen and a diminishing number of services were being delivered to them. The $1.82 billion paid to Canstruct over five years for the Nauru contract added significantly to the wealth of Queensland’s Murphy family, who were also Liberal National Party donors. Their family-owned company, Canstruct International, posted profits of $127 million after tax in 2021-22 bringing total profits to more than $442 million up to the contract’s conclusion in late 2022. Canstruct International’s only business was the Nauru contract, under which it provided welfare and what’s known as “garrison services” to refugees and asylum seekers, including security, cleaning and catering, as well as other ancillary services on behalf of the Australian government. Company chief executive Rory Murphy co-owns the company with his brothers Adrian and Daniel, and their father Robin. Between 2017 and 2020, the family, its related companies and executives made donations of at least $47,500 to the Liberal-National Party. This masthead is not suggesting any wrongdoing or illegality relating to either the profits or the donations. Canstruct chief executive Rory Murphy in 2018.Credit: Facebook Companies often make political donations in return for access to politicians or in the hope of securing a favourable decision, which is legal. Any illegality or corruption concern would be on behalf of a decision maker if they were improperly influenced. The way the contract was managed by Home Affairs and the value for money it delivered are worthy of scrutiny. Canstruct said in a statement that the family company had done nothing wrong, and was “driven by the values of integrity and honesty, and our good reputation across Australia and internationally is testimony to that”. The political donations paid for “attendances at functions or events specifically held for the business community” and they had not discussed the contract with any politician, the statement said. “In relation to these matters, we have only ever dealt with departmental officials.” Canstruct did not answer a question about whether it believed its contract represented value for money for Australian taxpayers. Retired Victorian Appeals Court judge and integrity expert Stephen Charles said the almost two billion-dollar Nauru contract raised serious concerns, particularly “the extent to which very substantial donations from a particular tenderer led to that tenderer being granted an enormously valuable contract”. The other key integrity concern was whether it delivered value for money, Charles said. He believed the contracts should be examined by the new National Anti-Corruption Commission. “There were a very large number of donations apparently from the same family in Brisbane, and with really very little justification for the size of the contract, and very real questions about whether the Public Governance Act and Commonwealth Procurement Rules have been followed at all,” Charles said. These questions should be asked of the government officials involved, he said. “On the face of it, one questions very strongly whether anything like value for money was obtained in this case,” he said. Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton declined to comment but has acknowledged previously meeting senior executives of Canstruct three times between 2017 and 2019 at Liberal-National Party functions, including Rory Murphy. Home Affairs department secretary Mike Pezzullo has previously told parliament that Dutton had no role in the awarding of the Canstruct contract. A Surfers Paradise property purchased by Canstruct CEO Rory Murphy in January 2018.Credit: Domain Rory Murphy bought a house on Brisbane’s “power street” King Arthur Terrace, with 98 metres of river frontage, a tennis court and a six-car garage, for $17.6 million in October 2019 – two years into the Nauru contract. His brothers, fellow company directors and shareholders, also made large property purchases in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The news comes after this masthead’s Home Truths series exposed serious allegations that Home Affairs contracts were misused to provide suspect payments to officials and politicians on Nauru and Manus Island. Figures compiled from a series of documents tabled in federal parliament over several years show that, from a peak of 1094 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru at the start of Canstruct’s contract in 2017, the number fell quickly so that, in the final year of the contract for which figures are available, only 110 men were on the island. The last refugee left the island in June this year. Over the same period, the number of services Canstruct offered to the refugees and asylum seekers steadily fell. Answers to parliamentary questions on notice show that for the first three years of its contract, Canstruct was delivering 14 separate services including education and training, community engagement, translation and interpreting and care and support for minors. But in January 2019, the refugee processing centre itself closed and people were moved into the Nauru community. In February of that year, the last child was moved off the island and in July 2019, the government of Nauru took over cleaning and maintenance and welfare services. By the final year of its contract, Canstruct was offering just eight services to those who remained. Canstruct director Daniel Murphy skiing in Banff, Canada, in 2022.Credit: Facebook Despite this, the department was still paying up to $50 million per month, and well over $300 million per year, until the contract ended in October 2022. The department said in answer to questions on notice, and also to the Auditor-General, that the contract payments remained steady because of unspecified “fixed” costs. “A number of the contracts have large fixed components. These costs do not vary due to size of cohort accommodated, remaining static notwithstanding there may be one relevant person or 100,” Home Affairs told the Auditor-General. Asked repeatedly which costs were fixed and how much Canstruct was paid to deliver particular services, the department refused to do so, saying at times it would be an “unreasonable diversion of resources”, and on one occasion, that it pertained to “commercially sensitive information”. Canstruct originally ran a construction company, which won an open tender under the Gillard government to build regional processing centres on Nauru when they were reopened in 2012. Hospital buildings on Nauru.Credit: Chris Jones When Home Affairs invited Canstruct to bid for the service contract in 2017, it was awarded without an open tender. Canstruct had never previously delivered services to refugees and asylum seekers. The contract was then extended seven times over five years, also without tender. Before the contract was originally signed, Home Affairs commissioned consulting firm KPMG to perform a financial strength assessment on Canstruct. The Auditor-General noted it was the only due diligence inquiry undertaken as part of the procurement process. But, while the assessment purported to look into the finances of the services firm, in fact it was conducted into Canstruct’s separate construction company. KPMG found the construction company, which had net assets of $26.8 million, was a “moderate to high financial risk”. At the time the services firm, Canstruct International, would likely not have passed the assessment because it had only $8 in working capital. KPMG said it did not comment on client matters, but, in an answer to a parliamentary question last year, Home Affairs conceded that Canstruct International had not been trading when it was awarded the contract and therefore the department “had no financial information upon which a Financial Strength Assessment could be made”. The multimillion-dollar Queensland property owned by Canstruct director Adrian Murphy.Credit: Domain Given the “tight timeframes” to ensure a new contractor was able to start on Nauru, the department “instructed KPMG” to interrogate the financial strength of a different company. After the Home Truths series, Labor Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil announced on July 31 that former senior public servant Dennis Richardson would inquire into “any integrity concerns about contracting arrangements regarding regional processing”, as well as Home Affairs’ governance arrangements, oversight processes and systems for managing offshore processing. Government sources who were not authorised to speak publicly said officials have been ordered to cooperate. However, unlike the anti-corruption commission, Richardson’s review has no power to compel witnesses, particularly those who are not public servants. Charles, the integrity expert, said without those powers, the review could not hope to get to the bottom of the issues.
Within 10 minutes, $20,000 was cashed in and out of two pokie games without a single stroke of play ByHarriet Alexander August 13, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...-a-single-stroke-of-play-20230810-p5dvf1.html The gaming regulator’s active pursuit of money laundering through pubs and clubs in NSW ceased at 2.40pm on July 8, 2022 when five bureaucrats from its complaints and escalation panel rose from their weekly meeting. Nine clubs that Liquor and Gaming NSW was investigating for habitually allowing their premises to be used for unlawful purposes would be told that the complaints against them were withdrawn. Their behaviour was concerning, no doubt. But the panel had determined that money laundering was not an appropriate focus for the agency and any relevant information should be passed to police. All Liquor and Gaming investigations into money laundering via poker machines came to an abrupt halt in July 2022.CREDIT:JANIE BARRETT Elsewhere in NSW, the flow of dirty money through the state’s poker machines was gaining unprecedented attention, with a second casino probe afoot and the NSW Crime Commission conducting its own inquiry into pubs and clubs. But ministerial responsibility for gaming had returned to the Nationals party following a recent cabinet shuffle, and it was back to business as usual for the regulator. The industry took note. “Hang on,” one chief executive said when informed that Liquor and Gaming was about to serve his venue with a Show Cause notice, according to a source not authorised to speak. “The minister said we wouldn’t be getting any more of these.” The minutes from the complaints and escalation panel’s meeting are among a trove of documents into money laundering released to state parliament last week. They include communications between Liquor and Gaming investigators and police, profiles of persons of interest, summaries of surveillance footage and spreadsheets showing thousands of transactions flagged as potentially suspicious, where sums of up to $5000 were placed onto machines and cashed out with zero play. Placed together, the documents tell the story of how Liquor and Gaming abruptly terminated its own investigation into money laundering through poker machines in pubs and clubs just as the extent to which criminals were using them to clean their cash was becoming clear.... Continues.....
Tax avoidance Exclusive TikTok GST fraud hit on Tax Office blows out to $4.6b Neil Chenoweth Senior writer Aug 14, 2023 https://www.afr.com/companies/profe...-tax-office-blows-out-to-4-6b-20230813-p5dw2y The Tax Office has admitted paying out more than $1.6 billion in fake GST claims as part of a $4.6 billion fraud based on a simple scheme promoted on social media platform TikTok – a total that is twice previous reports and the biggest tax fraud in Australian history. The fraud was uncovered by Westpac and other banks, some of which passed on a series of alerts to the Tax Office from 2020. But after being frustrated by the apparent lack of action by the Tax Office, some bank staff shared their concerns informally with the Reserve Bank, which then alerted Treasury and the Tax Office in February last year. ATO deputy commissioner Will Day. The Tax Office launched Operation Protego to pursue the fraud on April 11 last year, and the federal police have since conducted a series of raids that have led to more than 100 arrests. There has also been compliance action against 56,000 people. Yet, the ATO has operated largely under the radar. “We have stopped in the order of $2.7 billion in fraudulent refunds and raised liabilities in the order of $1.9 billion, as at 30 June 2023,” deputy commissioner Will Day, who heads Protego, told The Australian Financial Review. He said the liabilities included $300 million in penalties and interest. Accountants in western Sydney, where the fraud went viral in mid-2021, said new examples continued to show up as clients filed their tax returns, which shows that the fraud continues. From late 2020, banks noticed a wave of suspicious transactions where customers on social benefits had received large business payments – in some cases more than $100,000 – from the Tax Office. The banks froze the accounts and notified the Tax Office about the transactions, but became increasingly frustrated when the Tax Office took no action against the accounts. How the scam worked The Tax Office’s position is that it could not tell the banks what it was doing because of taxpayer secrecy laws. However, there was disagreement within the Tax Office over which section would handle the matter. From mid-2021, the fraud exploded as social media influencers on TikTok explained to their followers how to obtain a “loan” from the government. The scam involved people obtaining an Australian Business Number or ABN, then using their MyGov account to apply for GST refunds on huge fictitious expenses they claimed to have incurred in setting up their new business. Although the Tax Office at first reported that the average amount claimed was $20,000, accountants in western Sydney told the Financial Review that among their clients, the average amount raised from the fraud was more than $80,000. The Tax Office’s prevention measures were overwhelmed as the fraud went viral, with thousands of people making false claims for refunds each day. By early last year, the banks, which were collaborating with the FinTel alliance set up by Austrac to scope out the size of the fraud, were desperate about what to do with the frozen accounts, in the face of apparent inaction by the ATO. “We notified the ATO, and they didn’t want anything to do with it,” a bank executive told an adviser. Several bank executives reached out informally to the Reserve Bank, which met with the Tax Office in mid-February last year. The banks and the RBA referred media questions to the Tax Office and deputy commissioner Day denied any inactivity by the ATO. “When our combined intelligence first discovered the rapidly escalating fraud attempts in early 2022, we swooped in quickly,” he said. “By late February 2022, we had dialled up our efforts to put a stop to these fraudulent attempts to a ’10 out of 10’. We pushed our efforts to an ‘11’ when we commenced Operation Protego.” In May last year, the Tax Office said Protego was launched after “sophisticated risk models deployed by the ATO, coupled with intelligence received from banks including through the Austrac-led Fintel Alliance and the Reserve Bank of Australia, identified a recent spike in suspicious refunds”. Initially, the Tax Office claimed that $850 million was paid out on the false claims, with more than $1 billion in further claims stopped by Protego. It had recovered $66 million, mostly from accounts frozen by the banks. The Tax Office’s annual report for last year noted that “in many cases recovery of refunds already issued will not be routine due to the fraudulent nature of activities and the financial position of many of the perpetrators”. Last February, it reported that it had stopped $2.5 billion of claims but made no reference to how much had been paid out. The latest total includes limited investigation of the fraud before last year. “Our initial focus was on stopping fraudulent refunds before they were issued,” Mr Day said. “When we identified taxpayers who had made multiple attempts to participate in this fraud, even after we had declared Operation Protego, we looked closely at their previous lodgment history and, in some instances, discovered prior offending. We took action against this fraud too. “We’ve seen a significant slowdown of fraud attempts in the recent months,” Mr Day said.