$581,787 tender awarded to Ernst and Young shows up nowhere on the government’s awarded contracts database

DESPITE the progress it thinks it has made, the Territory Labor government struggles significantly with transparency and accountability

DESPITE the progress it thinks it has made, the Territory Labor government struggles significantly with transparency and accountability.

It also has a problem with making big motherhood statements about being in budget strife, and in almost the same breath splashing six-figure sums on what can come across as wasteful

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The whopping $581,000 tender awarded to Ernst and Young, which included bringing in former Department of Trade, Business and Innovation boss Michael Tennant to undertake a review of NT Health amid the pandemic, and then to lead an internal restructure of the department, is one such example.

The tender awarded to E&Y, mentioned above, shows up nowhere on the government’s awarded contracts database, perhaps because it never went through a public tender process.

The only reason we know how much it costs is because of a written question on notice that happens to list it as a line item. A single line in a 66-page document, to be precise.

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The public deserves to know how the government spends money and the government should also explain the reasons behind its decisions to drop incredible amounts of money on projects that could be run by its rather large public service.

The government needs to accept that it is performing terribly on the transparency and accountability front.