Nearly three quarters of the national agency’s expenses are payments to suppliers, with Tourism Australia listing contracts worth $265.6 million on the federal government’s tender portal AusTender in the last three financial years.
The report from the Australian National Audit Office found that the majority of the tenders analysed in the audit were “not involving open competition” and that the way Tourism Australia goes about procurement “regularly fails to adhere to requirements under the CPRs [Commonwealth Procurement Rules, issued by the finance minister]”.
The auditor’s report suggests the agency isn’t always evaluating potential suppliers to select the supplier that represents the best value for money, isn’t always documenting its management of conflicts of interest properly and should be keeping better records considering the scale of their procurement.
The agency was also called out for not having contract management plans, not demonstrating value for money in contract variations, and for including performance requirements in fewer than half of their contracts.
Other issues found in the audit included having a procurement policy that doesn’t fully adhere to what is required of the agency under the CPRs.
In addition, Tourism Australia’s reporting of contracts on AusTender was not meeting the requirements of the Commonwealth rules.
The audit report set out nine recommendations for Tourism Australia, ranging from documenting a comprehensive procurement policy framework to strengthening its procurement practices and controls, increasing competition in its procurement processes and improving documentation of the procurement process.
Tourism Australia has accepted all recommendations made in the report.
In a letter responding the audit report, Tourism Australia said it had already begun tightening up its procurement processes before the audit and is “fully committed to implementing its nine recommendations to improve the agency’s procurement and contract management practices”.
Tourism Australia outlined various actions it is taking to improve its procurement, including additional training for staff “to ensure that decisions are compliant, defensible and clearly demonstrate value for money”.
The agency also pointed out that some of the contracts examined were from the pandemic era where Tourism Australia’s focus was on supporting “an industry in crisis”.
