Officials and contractors under investigation following Australian Passport Office procurement audit

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia's Passport Office is under scrutiny after a damning audit revealed more than a dozen officials and contractors are being investigated for possible misconduct.

Transcript

00:00The passport office produces the document which every single Australian relies on whenever

00:08we go overseas.

00:10The office came under pressure last year over lengthy delays in processing passports and

00:15now its contracts to produce those passports, worth around $1.5 billion, have come under

00:22the auditor's microscope.

00:24The audit assessment is brutal.

00:27Few of those contracts were opened up to proper competition and in at least 16 instances

00:32officials failed to declare conflicts of interest.

00:37And 18 people, including current officials, former officials and contractors, are now

00:43being investigated by the department.

00:47That's not all.

00:48Auditors also examined two work trips which officials took to the Queensland resort town

00:52of Port Douglas, which they were scoping out for a major conference at a cost to taxpayers

00:59of more than $30,000.

01:02After booking a local resort, the officials decided they'd actually hold the conference

01:06in Canberra instead, which meant they had to fork out another $104,000 in cancellation

01:13fees.

01:15The government is unimpressed.

01:17It says things have improved at the passport office over the last 18 months, but it's still

01:22looking into exactly what happened and whether it might need to take further action.

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