Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. At
Speaker 1: its height, in twenty fourteen, there were over one thousand
Speaker 1: people being held on NARU as part of Australia's off
Speaker 1: short detention system, but in the decades since that figure
Speaker 1: has shrunk to less than one hundred. Yet the Department
Speaker 1: of Home Affairs continues to pay outsized and exorbitant fees
Speaker 1: on contracts no longer fit for purpose, all in the
Speaker 1: name of keeping Manus Island and NHRU off the front
Speaker 1: page and out of the minds of most Australians. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the men responsible for administering these deals, worth billions,
Speaker 1: has spoken out about the alleged corruption at the heart
Speaker 1: of our system and the bipartisan silence that allows it
Speaker 1: to continue. Today, Independent journalist Nick Fike on the whistleblower
Speaker 1: and the waste in the Department of Home Affairs. It's Monday,
Speaker 1: December one, Nick, Hello, welcome back seven AM.
Speaker 2: Great to have you on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks Ruby.
Speaker 2: So we're speaking today because you have been in touch
Speaker 2: with Derek Elias and he's someone that held a senior
Speaker 2: role at the Department of Home Affairs, but he hasn't
Speaker 2: stepped foot in that building for several years now, So
Speaker 2: tell me about why he wanted to speak with you.
Speaker 4: Yes, So I wrote some pieces about the Department of
Speaker 4: Home Affairs as overseas contracts, for example the ones involving Paladin,
Speaker 4: and I followed Home Affairs for a long time. He
Speaker 4: read a piece that I wrote in Krike last year
Speaker 4: and had contacted me. He is a former Home Affairs executive.
Speaker 5: From December twenty nineteen, I became the Assistant Secretary acting
Speaker 5: for visual processing contracts in Operations Sovereign Borders.
Speaker 4: In fact, he was the Assistant Secretary for offshore processing contracts.
Speaker 4: He'd walked out on his role in Operation Sovereign Borders
Speaker 4: following what he described as a significant probity breach involving
Speaker 4: quite lucrative home affairs contracts in Naru. And he had
Speaker 4: had a terrible experience with Home Affairs and it was
Speaker 4: one that he was still living through. So I was
Speaker 4: all ears and we've been talking for a few months
Speaker 4: now on and off.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he has this deep insider knowledge of what's
Speaker 2: going on with these offshore contracts, is actually in charge
Speaker 2: of administering them. So tell me more about this significant
Speaker 2: probity breach that he described, and the scale of what
Speaker 2: he was starting to see in the.
Speaker 4: Department, well, he quickly learned that it was standard department
Speaker 4: procedure to avoid tender processes by extending existing contracts.
Speaker 5: Their remit was shrinking with a number of people, but
Speaker 5: they were still charging lots of them money, and we
Speaker 5: had very little to negotiack with given that we had
Speaker 5: no other options.
Speaker 4: By this point, the contracts that he was administering were
Speaker 4: for a vastly different situation even from when the contracts
Speaker 4: had been started, So essentially, by twenty twenty, the numbers
Speaker 4: of asylum seekers.
Speaker 3: On Naru and Manus Island.
Speaker 4: Were only a fraction of what they'd been before, So
Speaker 4: the service requirements had changed radically, But contractors in Manus
Speaker 4: and Naru were refusing to alter the basic terms of
Speaker 4: the existing contracts, and they knew that they had home
Speaker 4: affairs over at Barrel.
Speaker 5: We were paying too much money for various things that
Speaker 5: could have been shut down years ago. We were paying
Speaker 5: for things that no longer existed.
Speaker 4: And Elias is asking his colleagues why are we paying this,
Speaker 4: what's this for? And essentially he's being told, don't ask
Speaker 4: the whole idea was basically to make sure that the
Speaker 4: public didn't really know the amount of money that was
Speaker 4: going into these contracts. Now, just to give you one example,
Speaker 4: offshore processing on NARU would reportedly cost Australia four hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty five million dollars in twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 4: this was even though there were only twenty two refugees
Speaker 4: and asylum seekers left at the regional processing center, So
Speaker 4: you're talking about twenty million dollars per person. These are
Speaker 4: the contracts that Elias is looking at, and for very
Speaker 4: good reason, raising.
Speaker 3: Alarm bells about.
Speaker 4: He's saying, why are we paying for entire medical centers?
Speaker 4: Why are we paying for pr staff when there's twenty
Speaker 4: two refugees and asylum seekers left in this processing center?
Speaker 3: And it's because of the contracts.
Speaker 2: Sure, I just wonder, I mean, this sounds off the
Speaker 2: idea that these contracts would go out and things are
Speaker 2: being paid for that are not necessary. But why do
Speaker 2: you think the federal government was in this way? Why
Speaker 2: do you think they had no leverage? Surely they could
Speaker 2: still have their policy on asylum seekers and then also
Speaker 2: renegotiate contracts.
Speaker 4: Home Affairs were being told by the Australian Government that
Speaker 4: Nuru and Manus Island had to keep operating and the
Speaker 4: asylum seekers couldn't come back to the mainland. So now, essentially,
Speaker 4: if you're going through a new procurement process for a
Speaker 4: large contract in Australian government, procurement can take several years.
Speaker 5: You have to go to market, do the market sounding,
Speaker 5: meet with the tenders, go through all of the documents,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so that's a proper procurement.
Speaker 4: And neither the Department nor the Government wanted to do
Speaker 4: anything that would risk having a delay of a year
Speaker 4: or two. So essentially they had these large contracts that
Speaker 4: they had to extend to ensure that asylum seekers wouldn't
Speaker 4: come back to Australia and to ensure that Nuru and
Speaker 4: Manus would keep being the host for our offshore detention centers. Now,
Speaker 4: over the years, I think a lot of people have
Speaker 4: come to question why we're still paying these massive amounts
Speaker 4: of money. It was sheer political convenience, and I think
Speaker 4: part of that package was paying contractors who were milking
Speaker 4: these contracts because they knew that the government didn't have
Speaker 4: the political will to change, and they knew. They have
Speaker 4: known for a long time that a lot of this
Speaker 4: money was ending up in the pockets of Nuru and
Speaker 4: Manus Island politicians. It was being subcontracted out to friends
Speaker 4: of friends of politicians.
Speaker 5: And nuin government interfeed with just about every fucking thing
Speaker 5: imaginable with what was happening on the island, just to
Speaker 5: melt money out of the government and bluntly say to us, well,
Speaker 5: you're not going to agree to continue these payments, then
Speaker 5: what's your option. That's when one of my supervisors at
Speaker 5: the time would say, well, we'll just give the contract
Speaker 5: to the government of Nauru, which was so obscenely roll.
Speaker 4: So, for example, you know, the nine newspapers started looking
Speaker 4: at payments that included insurance premiums for fine arts and
Speaker 4: for luxury cars and a yacht. And in the case
Speaker 4: of Derek Elias, you have someone who's looking at all
Speaker 4: of these arrangements and thinking, well, my job is actually
Speaker 4: to make sure we're not wasting money, and that money
Speaker 4: is being paid for services that we require, not for
Speaker 4: golf umbrellas, not for insurance contracts of sports cars. And
Speaker 4: the pressure was on was essentially on him, and eventually
Speaker 4: he cracked.
Speaker 1: Coming up.
Speaker 2: What happened when Derek Elias finally blew the whistle? So Nick,
Speaker 2: Derek eli starts to notice these huge problems in the
Speaker 2: contracts that he's overseeing between the Department of Home Affairs
Speaker 2: and NAU to house these asylum seekers. So what happens
Speaker 2: when he starts to raise his concerns within the department.
Speaker 4: Well, he says that as he raised them, he found
Speaker 4: that his colleagues and superiors were alarmed by his question.
Speaker 4: So he found a culture that just didn't want to
Speaker 4: upset the government.
Speaker 3: You'd ask, what's going on? What are we doing about this?
Speaker 3: Why are we paying this?
Speaker 5: Because I was a newcomer, because I'd come from the
Speaker 5: un system, because I'd come from in from outside the
Speaker 5: public service, I just naturally walked around and asked these
Speaker 5: questions because they were so fucking obvious, and people would
Speaker 5: literally stare at you like you had three fucking heads.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It became evident that he was going to report his concerns,
Speaker 4: and it was made pretty clear to him that he
Speaker 4: was on his own. No one wanted to question their
Speaker 4: political masters. The department wasn't interested in redrafting contracts or
Speaker 4: trying to get back into these things. And at this
Speaker 4: stage he was just exhausted.
Speaker 5: I would be working until very late hours, turning around
Speaker 5: hundreds of pages of documents I had no chance of
Speaker 5: reading in order to keep the book the extensions on track.
Speaker 5: Otherwise it was my deck.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he's working incredibly hard doing a job that
Speaker 2: he thinks, you know, isn't even the right thing to
Speaker 2: be doing. So how does that affect him?
Speaker 3: He was just in terrible physical and mental shape.
Speaker 5: I had insomnia, social withdrawal, I was drinking heavily. I
Speaker 5: took up smoking again.
Speaker 4: And I think wisely, he went on stress leave, on
Speaker 4: extended stress leave, and then he put in a calm
Speaker 4: care statement for compensation for his mental health and the
Speaker 4: fact that he couldn't go back to work, and in
Speaker 4: some that's where.
Speaker 3: The real trouble started.
Speaker 4: What happened next, Well, his comcuare statement was disputed by
Speaker 4: the department. Instead of accepting that his ill health might
Speaker 4: be resulted from his job, they blamed it on alleged
Speaker 4: pre existing conditions, including his drinking. And they also allad
Speaker 4: that he was bitter at not getting a promotion. So
Speaker 4: he's a guy who's in charge of administering billions of
Speaker 4: dollars of government contracts. He's raising alarms about the working conditions.
Speaker 4: His initial statement had mentioned the fact that there was
Speaker 4: a toxic workplace culture.
Speaker 3: It alleges that he'd experienced pulling.
Speaker 4: These were by no means unusual responses about Home Affairs
Speaker 4: as well. Home Affairs has for years been rated among
Speaker 4: the very worst departments in the government to work for,
Speaker 4: with the highest compensation claims. But instead of accepting his
Speaker 4: claims and working with him, Home Affairs threw all its
Speaker 4: efforts into discrediting him. His case ended up at the
Speaker 4: aat the Administrative Affairs Tribunal and it's been dragging on
Speaker 4: for literally years. He's repeatedly raised his concerns with the Omitzman,
Speaker 4: the Attorney General's Department, Ministers with Comcare, the Australian Government solicitor.
Speaker 4: He sent allegations to the NAK, the National Anti Corruption Commission.
Speaker 4: He contacted the Human Rights Commission and the AFP who
Speaker 4: These latter two organizations he says, have engaged with him,
Speaker 4: but with the others, including the KNACK, he had no
Speaker 4: headway at all. He was put in an impossible situation.
Speaker 4: He spent four years he's been privately trying to raise
Speaker 4: his concerns. It's only now that he's come out and
Speaker 4: gone public.
Speaker 2: And so speaking out for him is a last resort.
Speaker 2: And after hearing his story, Nick, and the way that
Speaker 2: various bodies have responded to what's happened, where are you
Speaker 2: kind of left in terms of thinking about the level
Speaker 2: of accountability and transparency here?
Speaker 4: Well, I was under the impression of this is why
Speaker 4: you had a National Anti Corruption Commission that could look
Speaker 4: at these things independently. I would have thought this is
Speaker 4: what the AFP are looking at. I think it's very
Speaker 4: easy to say this stuff is in the past.
Speaker 3: These are old contracts.
Speaker 4: It's not like that anymore, and this is what the
Speaker 4: Department is now saying. But the fact that they will
Speaker 4: not engage just demonstrates that they're still not ready to
Speaker 4: have this conversation. And I don't think it's likely to change.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's clearly a bipartisan consensus about operations sovereign
Speaker 4: borders and the use of NARU and Manus Island. But
Speaker 4: I have serious concerns about the actions of the KNACK
Speaker 4: of it that they're inaction of the KNACK over this.
Speaker 4: It would take an inquiry, a royal commission of some
Speaker 4: sort to actually figure out how much money has been blown.
Speaker 4: And I think what it indicates is that the political
Speaker 4: forces behind this shameful arrangement, let's face it, because these
Speaker 4: billions of dollars are being spent on punishing people who
Speaker 4: came to Australia to seek a better life. These are
Speaker 4: asylum seekers who were put on these dreadful Pacific Island facilities.
Speaker 4: They've been stuck there indefinitely and now they're the locusts
Speaker 4: of incredible amounts of government funded corruption allegedly. And the
Speaker 4: one person who's best placed among anyone we've ever come across,
Speaker 4: he's the most senior whistleblower in home affairs that we've
Speaker 4: ever come across. He has receipts and he's been trying
Speaker 4: responsibly to raise these things and he's getting no traction.
Speaker 4: I mean, it tells me that the rots aarded at
Speaker 4: the top and they're just not interested.
Speaker 2: Wee, Nick, thank you so much for all of your
Speaker 2: time today.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much. Ruby.
Speaker 2: Also in the news, childcare centers across the country will
Speaker 2: be made to close early five days of the year
Speaker 2: for mandatory staff safety training. Federal early Childhood Education Minister
Speaker 2: Jess Walsh made the announcement as part of reforms to
Speaker 2: TITAN regulation after numerous scandals plague the sector. National's leader
Speaker 2: David Little Proud has back to the plan. The government
Speaker 2: is also trialing the use of CCTV incentives and introducing
Speaker 2: a national register of childcare workers, and Opposition leader Susan
Speaker 2: Lee says the coalition is considering tougher values and language
Speaker 2: tests for aspiring migrants as the party settles on its
Speaker 2: migration policy. Susan Lee says the coalition's approach to immigration
Speaker 2: will be announced by the end of the year, but
Speaker 2: said tensions in Australia over immigration was the fault of governments.
Speaker 1: Not migrants themselves.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.