A system designed to ensure transparency and integrity in political funding has more than doubled in contract value in six months, ballooning to $71 million.
Yet the agency that commissioned it has shrugged off questions about the escalating costs, attributing them to a "modular contracting approach".
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) contracted Accenture in January 2026 to build a secure, cloud-based platform to manage political donations as part of the Funding and Disclosure (FAD) reform program.
Following adjustments to the implementation timeline, the reform is now scheduled to come into full effect at the start of 2027.
It required a technological overhaul to enforce the new donation caps, manage near real-time transparency for political donations during election campaigns and administer the disclosure threshold, which was lowered to a compromised $5000.
AusTender showed the initial contract was valued at $30 million, but it has quickly skyrocketed to nearly $71 million through four amendments.
The largest variation to the contract occurred in July 2026, which added $28 million to the project cost.
An AEC spokesperson defended the escalating costs, maintaining that the contract variations were part of a planned, "modular contracting approach" shared with the market during the tender process in 2025.
The program was being split into an unspecified number of "work packages" that would be progressively released to Accenture based on the delivery performance.
"This approach draws on lessons from other major transformation programs and gives government greater control over vendor performance, delivery, and expenditure, while preserving the AEC's ability to negotiate value for money," the spokesperson said.
Despite defending the approach, the AEC declined to disclose the total anticipated budget or hard ceiling for the FAD project.
The spokesperson said publishing forecast funding could prejudice active commercial negotiations or misrepresent uncommitted expenditure.
Greens finance and public service spokesperson Barbara Pocock rejected the justification from the commission, highlighting the overriding public interest in the political funding register.
"We deserve to know the total budget for this project," Senator Pocock said.
"The AEC can call this whatever they want, but Accenture are raking in more in amendments than from the initial contract. This looks like a classic case of land and expand strategy to me."
A Canberra Times analysis of AusTender data between the 2022-23 and 2026-27 financial years revealed while the number of new base contracts awarded to Accenture has steadily declined, the value derived from amending existing contracts has skyrocketed.
In 2025-26, Accenture secured more than $667 million in contract variations, eclipsing the $233 million it earned from new contracts during the same period.
Across the five-year window, Accenture has earned more from contract variations rather than the original contracts. More than $1.6 billion (51.7 per cent) of the $3.15 billion awarded to the company came through amendments rather than the base contracts.
Although contract variations are often legitimate with many containing extension options, critics fear the mechanism is being exploited to quietly extract additional government funds, sidestep competition, and dodge oversight.
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"Contract amendments are how the big consultancy firms make their super-profits from government money," Senator Pocock said.
"They hide behind 'commercial in confidence' refusing to provide details, while extracting millions more from the original contract without transparency."
Scrutiny over Accenture's contract variations hit fever pitch in late 2025, when it was revealed that the company's contract to redesign Bureau of Meteorology's weather application and website rose from an initial $31 million estimate to $96.5 million.
Despite the blowout, Accenture was awarded an additional $15.7 million contract by the bureau for the Australian Climate Service.
Senator Pocock said the BoM website debacle was proof that government agencies lacked the internal capability required to manage major tech integrators and hold them to account on delivery.
"The BoM website scandal, among many other massive tech contract blowouts, show that we need effective costing, control, milestone management and active management of 'land-and-expand' and power and relationship mapping," Senator Pocock said.
"It shows that despite the PwC and KPMG scandals, the big consultancy firms continue to work the system for massive profits. It is high time for the Government to implement the recommendations of earlier inquiries: we need to regulate these firms."
The AEC spokesperson said major elements of the FAD system, including a new compliance system and data capability, have not yet been commissioned, signalling that further multimillion-dollar amendments to Accenture's contract will probably be executed before the project is completed.
