A senior Department of Home Affairs official has levelled allegations in the administrative appeals tribunal that taxpayer funds have been misused within Australia’s offshore detention system and the multimillion dollar contracts are “broken” and not fit for purpose.
The allegations, which were first reported by the Age, are part of evidence given by then assistant secretary Derek Elias as part of a Comcare case. Elias is seeking compensation from the department over mental health issues he allegedly suffered while working in Australia’s regional processing scheme in 2020 and 2021.
Elias has alleged misuse of funding including $6m of items in dispute with a contractor in Papua New Guinea in 2020. He alleged there were purchases of golf umbrellas and other items not related to the delivery of health services.
“I found this extremely odd that I was to be put into a position where I had to sign off on activities and services which I later learned in 2021 had not been finally negotiated, and that was giving me great concern under the commonwealth procurement rules as to whether we were actually doing the right thing or even abiding by the law at that time,” he said according to the transcripts from the late 2023 administrative appeals tribunal hearings obtained by Guardian Australia.
Elias alleged that the department had to renew what he saw as “broken, unfit for purpose contracts at extraordinary expense to the public, taxpayer” on more than one occasion, and his time in that section of the department was characterised by “grim discoveries” about the way contract negotiations were being done, the payments being made, and the services rendered, particularly by Canstruct on Nauru.
He alleged Canstruct was being paid $600,000 or more a month to do extra work, but claimed that he determined that the extra work had not been done for two and half years. He also alleged that Canstruct was performing services for the government of Nauru such as training the then president’s dog and providing meals that Elias said was a waste of public money.
In July last year, the federal government appointed Dennis Richardson, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence, to undertake a review of procurement for offshore processing in the Department of Home Affairs. That followed revelations the former government continued to pay millions of taxpayer dollars to a businessman convicted of corruption to provide offshore processing services on Nauru, even after he had pleaded guilty to bribing Nauruan government officials.
In another incident that Elias said added to the stress of the role, he said that after a near fatal bashing of a detainee in Nauru, getting the person back to Australia via air ambulance was “extremely difficult” due in part to the Nauruan government trying to charge the department an extra $5,000 per night to switch on the landing lights. Elias said it was “difficult behaviour of them”.
“That kind of triggered it in terms of, you know, a lot of intense conversations at night … that was very intense. And also to try and work out how to avoid that situation, because a loss of life would obviously lead to a coronial inquiry which people in the department were petrified of.”
Elias also claimed to have been verbally intimidated by the then head of Operation Sovereign Borders, Craig Furini. He alleged Furini – in a moment of annoyance over the procurement work – screamed that he wanted to “rip some motherfucking cunt’s head off” and also that the role was the “worst fucking job” he had encountered, including being in Afghanistan and “fucking kill[ing] people.”
In the hearing, Elias’s claims were challenged under cross-examination by government lawyer Sarah Wright. Elias confirmed under her questioning that there had been no email or text message to anyone in Home Affairs raising moral issues or moral objection to the work at the time, and in terms of raising concerns about Furini’s alleged bullying, Elias said he had written concerns about bullying in the department in an employee survey but did not name Furini.
In closing submissions, Wright said Elias had “reconstructed and rewritten history” to support his worker’s compensation claim. Elias’s barrister, Andrew Berger, said there had been evidence from another Home Affairs employee in the hearing that she was aware of the alleged bullying at the time.
Guardian Australia has sought comment from Furini, as well as Canstruct, the Department of Home Affairs, and the government of Nauru.
Furini denied the allegations in comments to the Age, and said he was not given a chance to refute the claims to the AAT.
Richardson’s report was handed to the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, late last year, but the government has not yet responded publicly or indicated whether the report will be released. There was no update on the report status as of Wednesday.
