Senior Victorian public servants hid up to $285m in Covid grant losses, watchdog finds
An investigation by Victoria's anti-corruption body found that senior officials in the Australian state concealed suspected losses of up to $285m from Covid-19 business support payments made to ineligible businesses.
Senior officials in a Victorian government department deliberately withheld the scale of suspected losses from flawed Covid-19 business support payments from their superiors, according to a special report by the state's Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC). The report was tabled in the parliament of Victoria, in south-eastern Australia, on Thursday. It examines how the public service responded once it emerged that support money had gone to businesses that should not have received it.
What the investigation found
During the pandemic, the Victorian government spent an estimated $257m on support grants for about 9,000 ineligible businesses. The IBAC inquiry, known as Operation Harmonia, examined the conduct of officers in the since-replaced Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions. Investigators found the department was aware by mid-2021 of potential problems with its use of GST (the goods and services tax) as an eligibility metric.
When the true scale of the losses came into view, suspected to be as high as $285m, the associate secretary and the deputy secretary chose not to pass the information up the chain. The deputy secretary directed that all information about the suspected losses be removed from a draft report intended for then-minister Martin Pakula and the Victorian Auditor-General's Office.
After the auditor-general opened an audit of the grants in 2022, the deputy secretary prepared a brief for the then-minister, Ben Carroll. IBAC found it contained "false and misleading" information, including claims that Pakula had been fully apprised of and approved the department's approach and that no payments had been made in error. IBAC described the assertion about Pakula as disingenuous. The watchdog made no adverse findings against Carroll, who is now the Victorian premier.
The commission's view
The report says this was neither a one-off nor an oversight, but a series of decisions to withhold information, followed by misleading material circulated over an extended period. IBAC commissioner Victoria Elliott said the report exposes serious failures by senior officers and that informing Victorians is crucial to transparency and accountability.
The investigation began after whistleblowers alleged corrupt conduct within the department, which was replaced in 2023 by the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions. Elliott thanked the whistleblowers and urged other public sector bodies to apply the lessons.
