Auditor-General launches probe into Home Affairs offshore contracts


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Paladin was the only company approached by Home Affairs for the work and was given just six days to lodge its costings with the department after a PNG-run tender process collapsed in mid-2017.


It gained notoriety by having until recently a beach shack on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island as its Australian head office. But Home Affairs officials told a Senate estimates hearing in February that the department had been mostly happy with Paladin’s performance.


Mr Hehir’s audit team will also examine an $82 million contract to politically connected PNG landowner company NKW Holdings to feed and house asylum seekers on Manus Island. This works out to be about $1400 per day for the 209 men at West Lorengau Haus and Hillside Haus.


NKW counts a former PNG Supreme Court judge turned political candidate for the ruling People’s National Congress as a director.


Leaked documents from within PNG’s biggest bank, Bank South Pacific, obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald raised concerns that its client, NKW, may have been inflating invoices to Home Affairs.


Article source: http://smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wattle-day-could-a-new-golden-australia-day-bloom-in-the-springtime-20170831-gy7qnk.html

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