Nervous silence behind the brick wall
State Government bungles and questionable decisions remain well hidden behind its multi-million dollar media management brick wall.
It’s a wall that even then Treasurer Jack Snelling couldn’t breach when he proposed a spending cut last December that involved the axeing of 50 media and communications jobs in State Government departments.
As InDaily reported last month, the bureaucrats won that battle – not only surviving the axe, but adding a few positions to boot.
The intra-department spin doctors have a dual role – they keep the nasty media at bay and make sure the Minister’s office doesn’t get too much information.
In recent weeks InDaily has exposed two cases of extraordinary departmental stuff ups.
The first related to a simple IT project called CASIS, established to coordinate the payment of concessions claimed under seven different schemes.
The project has raised the concerns of the Auditor-General and fell into a messy spot of bother when one of the consultant companies paid millions to sort it went into liquidation.
The second story revealed how Families SA knowingly promoted a convicted embezzler to the role of financial counsellor, while she awaited sentence on 16 charges over a $119,000 theft.
In both cases, the respective Ministers pleaded general ignorance.
You might like
In both matters there has been a blanket refusal by departmental and ministerial media advisers to either grant interviews or respond to specific questions.
In one case were are talking about millions spent on an IT project that was meant to be delivered years ago; in the other we are talking about a Families SA employee entrusted with providing guidance to families at risk, while she herself faced jail.
Our stories have revealed extraordinary detail mixed in with the stonewalling responses from those responsible for these stuff ups.
And it continues. The promises that each Minister and/or department made to us that they would follow up these matters have resulted in the following.
In the case of the embezzler who was employed as a financial counsellor by people who had actually been in court to support her during her trial we are now told: “The Minister has been advised by the chief executive that the investigation has not been completed.”
We are therefore unable to tell our readers whether or not the woman still works with at-risk families, or whether staff involved in supporting her in the embezzlement case have been asked to explain their actions.
We can tell you, however, that the employer who was left $119,000 out of pocket was never consulted about the woman’s prior employment despite her getting a job at Housing SA and later Families SA within six weeks of being handed over to police and sacked for theft.
Nor has it ever been explained to them why the woman’s small restitution payments that had been coming out of her government wages suddenly stopped, according to her former employers, when the trial finished.
The internationally accredited and successful business that employs 20 people nearly went to the wall when Melissa Green embezzled the $119,000.
The directors bear no malice against their former employee for whom they feel a degree of sadness, but their view of how the government works is another matter entirely.
In the case of the IT bungle, we spent weeks asking the Minister responsible for the CASIS project about the impact of lost revenue resulting from the government’s inability to keep track of eligibility for concessions – a problem meant to be fixed by the CASIS project back in 2009.
As we reported earlier this month, failed attempts to fix over-payments stretch back five years, attracting the ongoing attention of the Auditor-General in his reports on the Department of Communities and Social Inclusion (DCSI), which runs the concession schemes.
Stay informed, daily
One person who was intimately involved in the project estimates the losses at “tens of millions”.
The Department of Communities and Social Inclusion (DCSI), which is responsible for the project, rejected the estimate, but steadfastly refused to engage with us on their own estimate of the total losses.
When we pressed the largest concession granter – SA Water – on why they had not acted on the Auditor-General’s repeated concerns, they again put up the brick wall of indifference saying it was not a matter for them.
On being further pressed, one of SA Water’s media advisers conceded: questions “may soon be asked”.
“From here, we’ll be talking to the department; I’m sure that conversations will occur sometime soon,” she said.
Two days later (after a heated exchange over the phone) they went a step further: “SA Water takes this matter seriously and will be raising it with DCSI.”
We asked DCSI this week what their latest information was.
“The Minister is regularly briefed by the Department on a range of issues, including the implementation of CASIS,” a spokesman responded.
“He was briefed regarding the questions you asked earlier this month and was advised, as stated in the response, that there is no evidence to support the assertion that the total value of any ineligible concession payments is in the tens of millions of dollars. He was also advised that work is continuing on the full implementation of CASIS.”
The response neatly avoids the issues of how much, when, why etc.
And SA Water?
Here’s their response to our request for an update on whether they have been able to establish anything further in their discussions with DCSI: “no”.
Not even a capital N.
So the brick wall has done its job and kept the public interest at bay, for the time being.
Such fortresses can only hold, however, if they are sealed at both ends.
The good news is that the back end is still leaking like a sieve.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
