You would think it was big news that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had presided over billions of dollars in government contracts to allegedly crooked companies and ignored all warnings about them for years. Not so, according to News Corp publications, with The Australian barely reporting on the latest damning revelations — and even then only to seemingly excuse Dutton. Even the ABC only managed a single desultory online write-through of the story.
It emerged via the Nine newspapers on Sunday that an inquiry into the Dutton-era Home Affairs department, conducted by former director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Defence secretary Dennis Richardson, blamed senior public servants for years of failures that could have prevented taxpayers from paying billions to companies linked to alleged serious crimes.
The Richardson inquiry was followed up by Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill in estimates on Monday, but nor was this reported by News Corp organs: they will decide, apparently, what is news in this country and the circumstances in which it is reported. And if a story originates in the organisation formerly known as Fairfax, it’s not news.
This week revealed new details about how Home Affairs under Dutton entered into contracts with multiple companies that were under investigation by the Australian Federal Police. His department contracted a company whose CEO was being investigated for possible drugs and arms smuggling.
Richardson also found that the department’s internal audit, conducted in 2019 and reporting to minister Dutton, picked up that the government had subcontracted KPMG to look into a major tenderer, but that KPMG had conducted its audit on the wrong company. That is, instead of conducting a financial strength assessment on the company that the department had actually contracted (Paladin Holdings), it audited a completely different company (Paladin Solutions). The department had no financial statements of the company to which it would contract half a billion dollars worth of services. We learnt this week that Dutton had “noted” these auditing and procurement failures at the time, but did nothing to address them.
The audit also found that the department had never outlined its reasons for selecting Paladin (after a non-competitive tender process) in the first place. At the time, Dutton refused to release details of the contracts, but they certainly looked ugly from the outside: in 2017 the Australian arm of Paladin was registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island and had just $50,000 in capital. The company had prepared its bid in less than a week, and the contract it bid for was far more lucrative than anything it had undertaken before.
Soon after winning the contract, Paladin’s founder and major shareholder Craig Thrupp was being denied entry into Papua New Guinea over disputes about the company’s local subcontracting practices. (While Paladin received government funding of around $1,400 per asylum seeker per day, security guards were being paid just $450 per month. The company was making $1.3 million profit per week, according to documents later filed in bitter legal disputes between Paladin and its former executives. Thrupp denies any wrongdoing.) Paladin has also been under investigation by the AFP over bribery allegations involving PNG officials.
Documents released to the Senate in September 2019 reveal that Paladin breached its key performance indicators thousands of times during the first year of its operations. Yet the government renewed its contract several times.
Nor is this the only entity under the spotlight over corruption and other probity allegations. “Richardson confirmed that former Home Affairs contractor Canstruct, which managed a $1.8 billion rolling contract on Nauru between 2017 and late 2022, faces a separate federal police financial crime and bribery probe,” reported Nine’s investigative team this week. When it was originally awarded a contract to run Australia’s offshore processing in Nauru, the Brisbane construction company had not even commenced trading, and had just $8 in assets. Soon it was making $100 million in annual profits from its Home Affairs contracts.
In a strange coincidence, this was another case of KPMG conducting its financial strength assessment on the wrong company: Canstruct International Pty Ltd, rather than Canstruct Pty Ltd. (This may sound like an innocent or insignificant error, but according to Guardian Australia, the minister for Home Affairs confirmed that “its contract provided no recourse to Canstruct Pty Ltd should Canstruct International fail to meet its obligations under the contract”.)
Questions were raised by the Australian National Audit Office in relation to yet another Home Affairs contract too, with NKW Holdings, because they were “not representing value for money”.
Dutton presided over Home Affairs from 2017 to 2021, and in 2022 the Nauru offshore processing contracts that his department had initiated (under former secretary Mike Pezzullo) alone cost the Australian taxpayer $485 million, despite there being just 22 refugees and asylum seekers left there.
But is any of this really important? The fact that no bureaucrats, or the current Liberal Party leader, ever suffered any consequences for their failures, despite a litany of them over years, costing billions and prompting multiple corruption investigations? It’s apparently of little significance to either News Corp or the ABC that the alternative leader of the country is neck-deep in it.
The current secretary of Home Affairs, Stephanie Foster, appearing in estimates on Monday, replied to Senator O’Neill’s pointed queries only by saying that the internal audit report stood for itself. And while noting that “the processes were not adequate” and that the department had “learned from the past”, she nevertheless said that bureaucrats in the department wouldn’t face consequences as a result of these failures. Nor, it seems, will Dutton.
What are you thoughts on the Home Affairs saga? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Yes, that’s exactly what we have learned from the past: there is no accountability, nobody faces consequences (except whistleblowers) and nothing ever changes.
What about our brilliant AFP – no evidence anywhere of any of these corrupt billions ending up in Dutton’s personal coffers?
The AFP is the current version of the Commonwealth Police Force (CPF) created in 1917 by Billy Hughes to be the federal government’s Praetorian Guard. It understands very well that its primary objective is the protection of government ministers, hence its consistently superb and expert performance in not finding evidence of any wrong-doing by ministers, even in the most adverse and challenging circumstances where an Inspector Clouseau would have achieved a conviction.
Yes, the AFP is great at looking into unions and whistleblowers, but not corruption within established institutions and certainly not very good at looking at itself with a critical eye.
It deserves more scrutiny ; seen that “Great British Post office Scandal” and the tenacity of common older folk ? Nuh just villification of older people – lazy myopia
According to this posting on Twitter, Dutton looked after his sister and father with jobs with the contractors.
https://x.com/RoyanWg/status/1757562860035830106?s=20
Hmm – some reason the link is not working. The Tweet claims: “Peter Dutton not only installed his sister Karen into his (originally) bogus company, Paladin, he also installed his father Bruce into his bogus company Canstruct”
If this is true, the NACC should be all over it.
NACC should indeed be all over it. But we don’t know because of Albanese’s deal with Dutton to have it operate in secret.
No omg There was a public story
about another co called canstruct like this week ; I had no idea that was his ? That seems very odd
ya can always see the cut on the jib – a shiny suit
Dutton has form. Voted the worst, least effective Health Minister in living memory, despite Abbott having also held the portfolio.
Has anything Dutton ever done actually been effective, apart from his property investment portfolio?
His family did very very well out of subsidised child care centres, didn’t they?
One would think that such an association would render Dutton ineligible to sit in Parliament under section 44.
Wasn’t there also a fast track for a couple of au pairs that broke a few rulers? Where did they end up?
He’s apparently just done something similar for a bloke who didn’t pass the ‘character test’ to be given a visa.
oh but its the spouses ? oh and the older women who work for peanuts and no covid payments or job keeper for single mums but charging working women the “secondary bread winners”
under these sexist policies that loose upto 75% of their income in such housholds and pay such middle men childcare centres 175 bucks a day in some circumstances – indentured and abused biological women – but hey do not think facts – but these scum parasites feed and economic domestic abuse of women – whilst Freyemburg and Dunce get all our doh for their mates on jobkeeper and callled single mums jobseekers or unemployed older working women with teens and robodebting innocent young men and theowing wm to middlemen like “Tersa and Amp and helpourselves employment services scum who profit like Dickensian beadles
To its credit the WABC found space between Taylor Swift ads to run this https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/17/barnaby-joyce-footpath-video-incident-comment
Home Affairs should be broken up. It’s clearly a failure.
And one which should be sheeted home to Turnbull who meekly acquiesced to Dutton’s demands to amalgamate several smaller departments into the mega Home Affairs Department. He might now call Dutton a thug but Turnbull did nothing to curb the megalomania.
Abbott>Turnbull>Morrison>Dutton – sheesh!!
Howard wrote the song book.
One of my favourites from the Howard songbook:
Bail out my brother’s failing business, la la la….
Remember Manildra and the sudden appearance of sugar-derived ethanol at the petrol bowser?
So many good memories provided by Very Little Johnny Howard, so little media scrutiny.
Who said Australia does so poorly in the world political corruption rankings? We’re right up there with the big guys, I tells ya!!!
hah
Corrupt as all. No scrutiny. A few years later these people were demanding Julia Gillard give minute by minute recollections of a minor event 10 years previously.
Turnbull operating under his deal with the RWNJ element of his party seriously thought he could placate Dutton by giving him everything he wanted, Didn’t work.
its pathetic
Malcolm who relaxed cross media ownership but complains now after the genie mocks democracy ethics and economic and other values twisted to support olligarchs rather than the sovereign populations
Agree. Need to have a stand-alone Department of Immigration and Settlement.
clean up these riddled neo lib board rooms including the RBA
and ABC – and business councils and look at non profits and so called charity claimants and status
Imagine if this had been during the period of an ALP Government?? Yes, easy to predict- the minister would have been hounded, dragged through Sky news day after day, etc,etc. It would have been ‘news’ but apparently not when it involves Dutton and the LNP! Still a year or more before the election- Labor can’t go soft; bring it all out when the time is right!
Indeed – Pink Batts got a Royal Commission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_the_Home_Insulation_Program
The pink batts actually was a success in that its insulated one million homes and lowered their energy costs. The death incidents were actually significantly lower during the program.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/we-really-must-talk-about-the-pink-batts,5622
The deaths were the fault of the employers who didn’t train or OH&S. Just as people who die in traffic accidents while driving a government car can’t blame the gov’t (well, you know what I mean).
Exactly. If I pay an electrician to work on my house, he gets the apprentice to do the work without training and apprentice electrocutes himself, is that my fault?
Exactly. Pink Batts was a success in that it achieved its objectives – now there’s a model for Defence.
Yet the millions “spent” on the refugee detention concentration camp programs are being ignored in general discussion.
But never in our hearts, DF. The money takes second place to the cruelty: think of the scam money, and the people pop up like Jack-In-The-Boxes. Like, we paid how much to do what to those people? For all those years? I don’t know what it takes to turn people off voting for the bastards, if this didn’t – which it obviously hasn’t. Anyone who voted for it should change their ways. Not to mention all the other horrors the duopoly two-party system inflicted on the defenceless for disgusting political reasons. The fact that they do these things to get votes says it all about society. It takes very little, by comparison, such as reducing the ABC’s budget, for me to swear never to vote for them again. We must have lots of folk with hides like elephants and a dearth of imagination. Good Samaritans not. All gimme and no give.
Reply awaiting a tick.
as are 30,000 deadGazans
I hasten to disagree. The pink batts (Home Insulation Program) was instituted too quickly and haphazardly and incorrectly. It was a payment of $1000 to insulation installers to go into homes and operated like a subsidy. Rent seeking anyone? Now some homes cost more than $1000 to insulate and the scheme was false in being a supply driven one. A subsidy paid to the supplier and not a demand driven one – one paid to the consumer even as a part payment. A demand driven scheme would have operated better and kept many of the cowboys out, cowboys who proliferated as the scheme grew.
My wife told me of a young bloke who came to Nepean Hospital after working in 50 degree Celsius heat in a ceiling installing batts and he died. His insides simply melted. This is what happens when you roll out a scheme like this and 4 workers died needlessly. 4 in one year in one industry. Doesn’t sound like much but the home installation industry is small compared to others. Pointless calling for prosecution. Pointless calling for blood. The worker’s dead. The problems could have been fixed and the AGs under Bob Brown did offer to consult with the aloof, cold-blooded Rudd but he didn’t want to be constructive and Garrett, the Minister responsible, was out of his depth. Don’t overlook this mortal sin of the Rudd Government folks! We’d be calling for Dutton’s potato head if the scheme was his.
Isn’t it mandatory to put the word ‘fiasco’ after any use of the phrase ‘pink batts’? Or is that just the ABC style guide?
‘Your right to know’ indeed.
One wonders what the Laura Norder twins of Oberst-Gruppenfuhrer Dutton and Ober-Gruppenfuhrer Pezullo were actually doing during their tenure running the Australian Secret Police? No laws followed and stuff all order achieved seems to be the only outcome.
But how big was the sand pit they made?
When there was public criticism of all the massive immigration case backlogs under Dutton, his response was that he’d cancelled the visas of 6,000 criminals.
As a comment on that, I can’t imagine that there were 6,000 people whose criminal activities were so serious that they warranted visa cancellation, especially if they were people who had lived in Australia since childhood. But it shows that Dutton has never moved on from being a policeman with a small mind.
It could be that Dutton really didn’t understand the nature of the contractual obligations his Department was entering into.
now anti doxxing and labour minister Sa looks like a real estate agent ; first thing the bloke does is make protests illegal – liberals abysmal – labour not as abysmal but give the lobby driven neo liberal system time to feed the international
paymaster pupperteers
isn’t this something federal icac would investigate?
one has to wonder if it even exists?
Supposedly it does, but Albanese gave Dutton a needless gift and made its operations entirely behind closed doors, so who will ever know?
Yes, the ol paper tiger routine. So you’d think the Teals, greens, anyone would be using this to kick a goal. But with putting the boot in, there’s always the potential for blow back. Who needs the major partys’ dirty tricks departments making life unpleasant?
They will anyway. Lack of resources makes it difficult.
Monique Ryan is doing her best and we should support her vocally and in writing – the silent Australians – are seething and frightened but the turning is happening and im gunna burst – women are being gaslit and murdered and collectively the lie of ” “free trade” international data defence media conglomerate are imploding but they are murdering 30,000 innocents in the land grabs across the world
The “entirely behind closed doors” jibe is cheap and incorrect. Think back to how long the NSW investigations took before the public hearings. As I recall, public hearings effectively happen after the real investigations. As I also recall the federal laws allow for public hearings as considered necessary. Can you nominate an ICAC-type body which has all its hearings public?
Doesn’t “no public hearings” except in special circumstances mean just that? We’re not going to get to see whether questions are evaded or answered directly, like we have at ICAC. This matter stinks to high heaven and will be right near the top of the list for the new NACC, but the first we’ll hear about it, I suspect, will be when they release the results of the inquiry, or, hopefully, an interim report.
If the building where the inquiries is conducted is known, it would be good if a news organisation set up permanent web-cams on the entrances so we at least know who is appearing and how often. I imagine Mike Pezzullo will feature heavily. When contracts are issued worth millions of dollars are issued, I presume the departmental secretary’s signature is required. Is the minister’s signature also required?
remember both parties coted for the design – quid pro quo ?
refer to the expert Geoff Watson
It was a gift to Labor as much as it was to the LNP. Neither of them want transparency, accountability or a strong NACC. Don’t let the claims to the contrary fool you. Labor’s got its own dirty linen.
It’s why we need a Labor minority government next time. A condition of guaranteeing supply by the independents should be an open, public, and well funded NACC. Another condition would be knobbling the lobbyists. The AHA, whose function got Barnaby blotto the other day, Big Tobacco, Big Gambling, and Fossil Fuels all lead both the ALP and LNP around by the nose. Minority govt might give governing For the people a chance.
I’m not such a sunny optimist as you. In such a hung parliament, both the Coalition and Labor would on principle and from outright hatred and fear refuse to work with the minor parties and independents when faced with the sort of appalling demands you describe. Instead they’d give us a Grand Coalition, with Labor and the Coalition together, as a necessary patriotic compromise to save the nation.
Something similar happened in the Republic of Ireland after the 2020 election there. The two dominant parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are supposed to be implacably hostile to each other, over all sorts of irreconcilable differences going back to the Civil War of the 1920s, but as soon as it was apparent a third party was in a strong enough position to challenge their hegemony, they saw sense, acted on their common interest in preserving their duopoly on power and came together to keep out the upstarts.
That’s sobering SSR. You’d hope that if the “game of mates” continued under the coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, with the two sides obviously bargaining to divide the spoils of governing, that the voting punters would be a wake up and punish them at the next election by voting for the third group.
I really want parliamentarians that have had a successful career outside of politics, and then get into politics to “make a difference”. The high number of pollies we have that have gone from uni to being staffers, and then onto a preselection, does not lead to good governance.
I’m hopeful many others are thinking the same way.
its not great just like the myopic jobs market and meta data gatekeepers
all these” clever” think tankers but you seem to cynically just have succumbed its very concerning
concur – and ministers get voted independantly – fail specific portfolio you are out 4 years – party systems have been corrupted
Some don’t have to be led https://michaelwest.com.au/peter-dutton-india-trip-coal/
Something you won’t see or hear in the MSM.
” Yes Minister” on depressing steroids
in concept