An adviser on the $670 million sale of Forestry SA harvesting rights was given an unfair advantage to help secure a multi-million dollar job, a report to Parliament has found. Source: The Australian
The Auditor-General’s annual report also revealed government departments were ignoring deficiencies in financial control and accountability that managers had previously agreed to address.
Auditor-General Simon O’Neill’s report showed consultants were paid $9.5 million to develop the sale offer for Forestry SA harvesting rights to potential buyers.
O’Neill criticised Treasury for allowing the project’s preliminary sales adviser to bid for the sales adviser job, despite having created the brief for the position, because it meant the consultant had gained “a significant commercial advantage over other potential respondents”.
In response, Treasury told O’Neill it had to split the role and hired a preliminary sales adviser while awaiting Cabinet approval to hire a sales adviser. It added that because there were not enough experts in forestry sales, it could not exclude the expert hired as preliminary sales adviser from bidding for the final position.
Premier Jay Weatherill defended the asset sale process in Parliament as well as the consultants’ fees which, when combined with those for the sale of rights to use the Lotteries SA branding, totalled $25.6 million.
“One of the findings of the Auditor-General was that the price that was achieved for the sale of the forests was actually in the upper bounds of all of the possible reserve prices that were capable of being achieved for this particular sale, so that is a substantial achievement,” he told Parliament.
Overall, O’Neill said it was his assessment that when compared with past reports, there had been no noticeable reduction in the number, type and severity of issues raised with government departments.
“There are many repeat issues being raised with agencies, despite Audit being advised by agency managements that this issue when initially raised (in prior years) would be appropriately addressed,” the report stated.
Opposition treasury spokesman Iain Evans said these comments showed that after 12 years, the Government could not be bothered to respond to the Auditor-General’s recommendations.
“This goes directly to part-time Treasurer Weatherill who clearly isn’t driving the ministers to get their agencies to address the Auditor-General’s concerns,” he said.
“This illustrates that the Government’s tired, it’s lazy and has lost motivation. It’s suffering from financial fatigue with its big deficits, big debts and worst credit rating in Australia.”
