New South Wales government agencies have illegally charged people about $144m in merchant fees on an estimated 92m credit card transactions for services such as licence renewals, car registrations and fine repayments since 2016.
The finance minister, Courtney Houssos, on Wednesday said the government had referred the issue to the NSW ombudsman for an investigation into “possible serious maladministration” after the state auditor general alerted it to the issue in July.
