Australia's millionaire Minister for Home Affairs and Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton has gathered to himself a lucrative salary worth in the vicinity of $478,068 per annum, before any parliamentary entitlements are realised.
The Prime Minister's annual salary is only a little under $50,000 more than this, while the U.S, President's annual salary is apparently around AU$70,000 less than Dutton's annual payment for services rendered.
So is Peter Dutton giving taxpayers value for the revenue dollars they supply.
It honestly doesn't appear to be the case if this audit is any indication.
Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), Report
No.45 2017–18 The
Integration of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the
Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, excerpts:
On
18 July 2017, the Prime Minister announced that the government had
decided to establish a Home Affairs portfolio which would have responsibility
for:
federal
law enforcement;
national
security;
transport
security;
criminal
justice;
emergency
management;
immigration
and multicultural affairs; and
border-related
functions.
The Department of Home
Affairs has assumed all of the department’s functions (including the ABF) in
addition to functions from each of the Departments of Prime Minister and
Cabinet; Social Services; Infrastructure and Regional Development and the
Attorney-General’s department.
In addition to the ABF,
the Home Affairs portfolio also includes the following entities:
the
Australian Federal Police;
the
Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission;
the
Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre; and
the
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. …..
Conclusion
10. The Department of
Immigration and Border Protection achieved the integration of DIBP and ACBPS
and the creation of the Australian Border Force in a structural sense and is
also progressing with the implementation of a suite of reform projects.
However, it is not
achieving commitments made to government in relation to additional revenue, and
is not in a position to provide the government with assurance that the claimed
benefits of integration have been achieved.
11. The department
established largely effective governance arrangements which were revised over
time in response to emerging issues.
12. The department’s record keeping
continues to be poor.
13. The department is
effectively managing a suite of 38 capability reform projects and has developed
sound monitoring arrangements, although the Executive Committee does not have
visibility of the overall status of individual projects.
14. The efficiency
savings committed to by the department were removed from its forward estimates
and have thus been incorporated in the budget. However, the department has not verified whether
efficiencies have been delivered in the specific areas which were nominated in
the Integration Business Case.
15. Based on progress to
the end of December 2017, if
collections continue at the current rate the department will only collect 31.6
per cent of the additional customs duty revenue to which it committed in the
Integration Business Case.
16. In the Integration
Business Case, the department committed to a detailed Benefits Realisation
Plan. The plan was not implemented despite several reviews identifying this
omission. As a result, the
department cannot demonstrate to the government that the claimed benefits of
integration have been achieved….
18. Reporting to the
Executive focused primarily on integration and organisational reform, with
minimal coverage of progress in delivery of the suite of 38 capability reform
projects. Following the identification of this as a gap in the 2017 Gateway
Review, an Enterprise Transformation Blueprint was established to provide the
Executive Committee with greater visibility over the progress of activity
across the department.
19. There was no evidence
identified to indicate that written briefings were provided to the Minister on
progress throughout the implementation process.
20. Detailed
communication plans were established and implemented to support the integration
process. ‘Pulse Check’ surveys were regularly taken to evaluate staff
satisfaction and engagement with the process.
21. The audit found that the
department did not maintain adequate records of the integration process. This
finding repeats the outcomes of a substantial number of audits and reviews
going back to 2005. The department’s own assessment is that its records and
information management is in a critically poor state. The problems and
their solutions are known to the department, and it has an action plan to
address them, although numerous previous attempts to do so have not been
successful.
22. The department also
experienced a loss of corporate memory due to the level of turn-over of SES
staff, with almost half of SES officers present in July 2015 no longer in the
department at July 2017.
23. The department
initially identified possible risks to effective integration. However, regular
reporting against those risks ceased when the Reform and Integration Task Force
was disbanded.
24. The department made
extensive use of consultants to assist it with the integration process. Despite a requirement to
evaluate contracts upon completion, this did not occur in 31 out of 33 (94 per
cent) of contracts with a value of more than $1 million examined by the ANAO,
and therefore it is unclear whether these services represented value for money…..
The Assurance Partner [Third Horizon] was engaged by DIBP as a
consultant for the period 19 June 2014 to 18 June 2016 with a contract value of $2 million
The total paid to the consultant was $1.6 million. Due to the department’s
concerns with the Assurance Partner’s performance, the engagement ended early
in August 2015……
The initial allocation
of funds for the Portfolio Reform Program in the 2014–15 budget was $710.4
million.5 Additional funds were approved in successive budgets which brought
the total funding for the Program to $977.8 million. [my yellow highlighting]
BRIEF BACKGROUND
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