Brumby’s secrecy laid bare by Auditor-General

John Brumby has broken his promise to be open and accountable to Victorians and breached his own laws by keeping secret major government contracts worth $3 billion.

Shadow Minister for Finance Robert Clark said today the Victorian Auditor-General has also found the Brumby Government has wrongly removed key data from published contracts and failed to disclose the reasons for data deletion.

“These failures illustrate the Brumby Government’s secrecy and incompetence in managing taxpayers’ money,” Mr Clark said.

“John Brumby cannot be trusted when he says his government is open and accountable while keeping Victorians in the dark about contracts worth $3 billion of taxpayers’ money.

“These disclosure requirements have been in place since 2002, yet the Auditor-General’s report reveals a shameful pattern of concealment, buckpassing and breakdowns in fundamental reporting processes.

“Many of the Auditor-General’s strongest criticisms are directed at the Department of Treasury and Finance, which is supposed to set the standard for other government departments.

“The Minister for Finance has failed to uphold proper standards for government accountability and must accept responsibility for these crucial failures in his own department,” Mr Clark said.

Labor failed to make public 43 out of 144 government contracts valued at over $10 million as at 1 January this year – a massive 30 per cent failure rate. In total, around $3 billion of government contracts that should have been published have gone undisclosed.

The Auditor-General also criticised the government for wrongly certifying in the annual reports of every government department that the disclosure requirements have been complied with.

The Auditor-General found there are systemic breakdowns in disclosure and reporting controls that diminish transparency (p.vii) and that the false certification in annual reports calls into question the rigor of departmental compliance procedures (p.8).

“John Brumby’s government has also deleted large slabs of material from published contracts, failed to document the reasons for the deletions and could not justify them to the Auditor-General,” Mr Clark said.

“The Brumby Government also failed to publish the reasons for the deletion of crucial information from the multi-billion dollar desalination plant contract.”