North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency faces potential government audit over corruption allegations

The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency is facing calls from Commonwealth and NT departments to agree to an external audit of its services, culture and the way it is spending taxpayer millions.

NAAJA chair Colleen Rosas. Picture: Che Chorley

The Attorney-General’s Department has called on the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency to comply with an external audit of its services, culture and expenditure, despite the Auditor-General refusing to probe the embattled organisation.

NAAJA has come under intense scrutiny in recent months in the wake of allegations of corruption, bullying and harassment, with an internal KPMG review revealing employees did not feel safe raising concerns over such behaviours out of fear of negative career implications.

The Auditor-General this month refused to probe commonwealth spending within the agency, despite a request from opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash to do so, given $83m had been committed to NAAJA over five years. The Attorney-General’s Department has maintained that while the commonwealth administers the funding, the NT controls how the money is spent.

However, department officials on Tuesday revealed in Senate estimates they had co-signed a letter to NAAJA with the NT officials calling for an external audit.

“We are, of course, always concerned about the proper use of commonwealth money,” Attorney-General’s Department deputy secretary Tamsyn Harvey said. “Recently the secretary and her counterpart in the Northern Territory government have written to NAAJA … outlining a range of actions we think could be undertaken, and that would include an audit.”

Department secretary Katherine Jones said the audit would be undertaken outside the NAAJA, indicating the NT government would be best placed to conduct a review into the issues plaguing the organisation.

“There are various concerns obviously that have been aired in a range of forums and we … want to be satisfied funding is being used appropriately and there’s accountability about that,” she said.

Ms Jones said it was not necessarily the responsibility of the Australian National Audit Office to get involved and it was “a matter for ANAO whether they would accept doing an audit that’s outside their established program”.

Asked if department officials had requested Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to intervene, Ms Jones said they had not.

Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash urged the Attorney-General “to call on the ANAO to conduct that audit”.

“We’ve learnt of even more federal government money that is going to NAAJA and the Attorney-General should be very concerned about the serious allegations of misconduct and fraud … made. This is taxpayers’ money and taxpayers deserve to know it is being used correctly,’’ she said.

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said she was “appalled on behalf of the staff at NAAJA”.

“The Attorney-General should be ashamed that while serious misconduct allegations surround NAAJA, his department, which funds the organisation in multiple ways, has taken a back seat and manoeuvres away from responsibility and accountability,” she said.

“We learnt today the Attorney-General’s Department funds the organisation in multiple ways, and this does not include the $6m it receives via the National Indigenous Australians Agency from its own Justice Reinvestment Package.

“How can this government have any confidence or integrity when it chooses not to look forensically at the issues being raised?”