Last week, one of the top bureaucrats in the WA Department of Communities, Paul Whyte, was arrested and charged with two counts of corruption. Initially, it was alleged that he had embezzled $2.5 million since 2016 via fake invoices to shell companies. As of today, the figure has grown to $40 million, over more than a decade. That would make it the biggest public rort since WA Inc and one of the largest Australia has ever known.
The Department of Communities is a mega-bureaucracy whose portfolio encompasses child protection, housing, disabilities, local government, youth justice, and Aboriginal affairs. Whyte, who is in hospital after an apparent suicide attempt over the weekend, is assistant director-general. He used to run the Department of Housing when it was a standalone portfolio.
He lives in a $3 million mansion in one of Perth’s leafiest streets.
Meanwhile, I’ve lost count of the number of vulnerable Indigenous families whose public housing tenancies have been terminated for a few hundred dollars of debt. I was in court on Monday with a young mother of two with unpaid repair bills worth $1109. This paltry sum is for repairs that Housing demands be carried out through third-party, for-profit contractors.
The next day I saw someone who was evicted in 2017 for an unpaid bill of $549 to repair a Hills hoist. On further inquiry, Housing informed me there was also an unpaid water bill and issues with property standards. Nonetheless, the breach notice and court order only mention the repair bill — she and her four kids have spent three years on the street over a washing line.
And the man controlling the strings has just been done for dipping in to the public purse to the tune of $40 million. Apparently much of it went on racehorses.
My clients are outraged but unsurprised. Some Housing officers I’ve spoken to are furious, too. “How can we pretend we serve public housing tenants when this is our boss?” asked one who’s been there more than twenty years.
“Why would they ever trust us again?”
What a disgrace – In part, this is an extreme example of the “many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time”;
Greed is good, the market rules, and money is what matters in life.
White men are better than the rest and the natural world is there for us to pillage.
The vulnerable deserve their fate, and the 1% deserve their Golden towers.
Anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protecting.
From – Naomi Klein, author of No is Not Enough, an account of how Donald Trump came to be the US President, part of the same malaise.
This could make your blood boil.
Getting evicted for having damaged a hills hoist, it’s the very definition of petty bureaucracy.
Before getting on your high horse, most public servants wouldn’t do it, it requires a particular type of bastard up the line.
And no, the private sector wouldn’t do it better.
This is tragic too me, all his & his families assets should be sold..
He needs to be given an ankle bracelet, and maybe spend a stint on the streets, he gets to be homeless for a while may set an example to others..
I feel for these people that they had the repairs farmed out to those that will charge whatever they think they can get not what is reasonable, $549.00 for a hill hoist you could buy a new one & get it installed for that, again day light robbery on the most vulnerable in our society, sounds like an much needed overhaul of this department…
Unfortunately this seems to be par for the course, these days….
Thanks Jesse, the contrast to his Departments heartless outsourcing to private contractors over piddly debts, the family stress and disruption, and this guys lifestyle and corruption, is stark.
Upwards of $40Mill ripped from taxpayer funds! Hells Bells! If he is assistant director general, then the Director General should be sacked as well as Whyte receiving the heaviest penalty the law allows.
The Public Service never had these types and this level of unchecked corruption. It was a Mega Department – perhaps the WA Govt needs to break it up and have a long hard look at their Own Auditor’s office, and beef up the auditing budget.
How is it that Australia is fast developing a cruel public sector and corrupt officials, with national wage theft in private industry and some areas of the public service?
A fish rots from the head down. Bring on a federal ICAC with broad powers to hear cases from the private and public sector, open hearings, whistle blower protections and serious funding. The shop window dressing farce that Porter is proposing falls way short.