Tourism Australia has refused to say how much taxpayer money was spent keeping its most well-paid executive in free accommodation in an affluent Sydney suburb as he rode out the first nine months of the coronavirus pandemic before returning to his post in China.
Crikey can reveal Tourism Australia’s China-based executive general manager for eastern markets and aviation, Andrew Hogg, spent most of 2020 in Australia while continuing to receive the generous benefits associated with his posting in Shanghai.
Tourism Australia ignored many of the questions Crikey sent while reporting this story, including how much it cost to fly Hogg’s family back and forth to China on several occasions. However, the agency may be more forthcoming when it faces a grilling later tonight at Senate estimates.
Potential queries might also include the firing of three employees who blew $137,441 of taxpayer money on holiday trips, an incident Crikey revealed in April.
Hogg is by far the most highly paid employee at the agency. With all benefits, allowances, superannuation and his base salary included, he earned $819,983 in the most recent financial year. By comparison, Hogg’s boss, Tourism Australia managing director Phillipa Harrison, earned a total of $536,792.
The only specific figure Tourism Australia offered in response to Crikey’s questions was $57,329: the cost of relocating Hogg when he left China earlier this year to settle back in Australia.
Annual reports show Hogg received a total of $453,374 in benefits and allowances during the two financial years from 2019 to 2021. No other executives were listed in annual reports as receiving any such benefits.
Tourism Australia confirmed Hogg spent nine of those months in Australia, from January 2020 to September, after he became stuck in Australia in following a family trip to Perth.
“Mr Hogg’s total ‘other benefits and allowances’ are included in annual reports, in line with reporting requirements, and include accommodation expenses in Australia during the pandemic, when he was unable to return to China,” a Tourism Australia spokesperson told Crikey.
The agency said all benefits and allowances were paid out in accordance with Hogg’s existing contractual arrangements, and Crikey is not suggesting any wrongdoing.
According to sources who worked at Tourism Australia at the time, Hogg lived with his family in a house in the affluent Sydney suburb of Manly while China’s borders were shut (the country shut its borders to foreigners from March 28 to September 28, 2020). According to a real estate website, the average house rent in Manly in 2020 was $1,500 per week.
One source said that while Hogg is well liked by many colleagues, the free Sydney rent arrangement raised a few eyebrows among staff. “There was always chatter when the annual report was released and the executive salaries were published, including Hogg’s allowance,” the source said.
Because the time Hogg spent in Australia straddles two different financial years — and because Tourism Australia has refused to break the payments down by calendar years — it’s not possible to say how much of the allowances and benefits were paid out while Hogg was in Australia.
The agency said Hogg’s family footed their own bill for the January 2020 holiday to Perth. After the Australian government shut the country’s borders on February 1, Tourism Australia paid for Hogg’s accommodation in Sydney, the agency said. When Hogg returned to Tourism Australia’s Shanghai office in September 2020, the agency paid for the flights, although a direct question from Crikey about how much that move cost was ignored.
One ex-Tourism Australia employee who spoke to Crikey on the condition of anonymity said the agency usually employs staff in foreign locations under the local employment conditions of the country where they work. In agency parlance, those employees are known as “locally engaged” and are most often not Australian citizens.
“There are no benefits unless you have negotiated them in [advance], and even then it would only be for very senior people [like Hogg] this would apply,” the person said.
Employees who move abroad after being transferred internally generally receive a relocation allowance, but it’s usually much smaller than Hogg’s package — a typical relocation allowance might include paid flights and a month’s accommodation, the source said.
Hogg joined Tourism Australia in 2015 after a long career with Qantas Airways. According to Hogg’s LinkedIn, Tourism Australia promoted him from regional general manager in China to executive general manager in April 2020. He describes himself as responsible for the agency’s Asian operations and the “global role of aviation within Tourism Australia”.
