A comprehensive report scrutinizing the Defence Department’s management of a military contract worth $1.3 billion has been made entirely public, almost three years after an ABC investigation revealed a potent legal attempt to conceal certain aspects.
Key Takeaways:
- In 2015, the Turnbull government granted Thales a contract without competition.
- The Auditor-General discovered that the Commonwealth could have saved a substantial amount if it had continued with the US contract.
- A previously concealed section stated that compared to the JLTV, Hawkei did not seem to offer “value for money”.
In 2018, the ABC disclosed that Thales Australia sought a Federal Court injunction against the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) due to a critical evaluation of its Hawkei project, which aimed to provide the Army with new armoured vehicles.
The French multinational defence company also persuaded Attorney-General Christian Porter to exercise exceptional powers to redact six sensitive sections from the ANAO’s inquiry into the light protected vehicle procurement before it was made public.
Thales was apprehensive about Auditor-General Grant Hehir’s conclusion that the Commonwealth could have saved a significant amount if it had continued with the United States joint light tactical vehicle (JLTV) program.
In 2015, after successfully persuading the Commonwealth to abandon the JLTV program, Thales was granted a contract without competition by the Turnbull government to manufacture 1,100 locally built Hawkeis.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has now ruled that the entire 2018 ANAO report on the Thales project can be released to the public, following a successful application by Independent Senator Rex Patrick.
In a previously unseen part of the report, the ANAO states: “Defence has not clearly demonstrated that the acquisition provides value for money, as it did not undertake robust benchmarking in the context of a sole-source procurement.”
Another previously concealed section confirms that the ANAO informed Defence in August 2017 of its “preliminary finding that the Hawkei did not appear to represent value for money when compared to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle”.
The Attorney-General has consistently maintained that he agreed to censor sections of the ANAO report on legal grounds, but Senator Patrick argues that it is now evident that Mr Porter made an incorrect decision.
Labor MP Julian Hill stated that the Government needs to provide some explanations.
In response, a spokesperson for the Acting Attorney-General Peter Dutton stated that the information was not published following a “thorough and considered process”.
“It is important to note that the relevant auditor-general report is, and has been, publicly available since September 2018, with only a small amount of particular information of the report redacted on these grounds.”
