The Tourism office is slammed for spending three-quarters of its budget on contractors, with most of those contracts made through closed-door arrangements.
Tourism Australia is currently targeting Indian tourists with a new Summer of Cricket campaign featuring Pat Cummins. There is no suggestion the campaign is among the work criticised by auditors.Tourism Australia failed to comply with requirements to find contractors who were best value for money, an audit has found.Tourism Australia has agreed to several recommendations, including to run more open and competitive tenders.
Auditors found Tourism Australia regularly failed to comply with requirements to find contractors who were best value for money,They found it was "common" for there to be no actions to manage identified conflicts of interest, including in cases where tourism office workers had previously worked for a company tendering for a contract, or no records of those actions.
That investigation looked at 15 declared gifts, and found three cases where staff had been gifted sponsored travel without seeking approval. The anti-corruption commission decided it would not launch an investigation because the employees had been terminated and the funds repaid.Half of the contracts auditors examined were awarded to candidates who had not been assessed to be the best value for money, and many contracts involved work commencing before a contract was actually in place.
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