One of the first acts of Australia’s new anti-corruption agency was to commit ‘significant non-compliance’ with finance law by failing to officially sign off on tens of millions of dollars of construction costs.
Cam Wilson
Jan 21, 2026
There’s not a lot of public information about the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC)’s offices, which are spread across the country. Even their addresses aren’t publicised.
One of the only things we know comes from NACC commissioner Paul Brereton’s opening address for the commission, held at its new headquarters on July 3, 2023. He said the offices were being “currently fitted out” and that the watchdog’s staff would soon move in.
What Brereton didn’t realise was that this fit-out had broken the law.
Almost immediately after the agency — which is tasked with fighting corruption — had officially launched, it committed what it would later call a “significant non-compliance with finance law”. NACC had signed up for $30 million worth of fit-outs for NACC’s offices in Canberra, Brisbane and Perth without proper approval or disclosure.
While it would later say that the risk of fraud from the error was low, it was an embarrassing early oversight from an agency whose short existence has so far been defined more by its missteps than its accomplishments.
This incident, flagged privately with the government, mentioned in NACC’s annual report and now revealed in documents obtained via a freedom of information request, has not been reported on until now.
A NACC spokesperson said the error had no impact on its budget and that the agency had reported the non-compliance to the government. Since then, it has taken several steps to ensure that this kind of mistake doesn’t happen again, they said.
An early misstep for NACC
When sitting down to prepare NACC’s first-ever annual report for the year 2023-24, staff noticed something was awry.
Its predecessor agency, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI), had negotiated leases and completed design work for offices. According to a “decision minute” — a record of a decision made in a meeting — referenced in a NACC document later on, the ACLEI’s integrity commissioner Jaala Hinchcliffe had approved leases and fit-outs in the lead-up to the agency’s launch.
As one minute from a January 2023 meeting noted: “Upon the engagement of the construction manager and design work undertaken, a detailed budget will be known.” Another meeting in February 2023 noted that the deputy integrity commissioner Petra Gartmann approved engaging the construction manager for two projects, and referred to the fees for the project, but didn’t approve it. Notes from both meetings mention that the expected fit-out would be within the existing budget allocation, but none specifically approved the fit-out expenditure itself.
Soon after the NACC officially came into existence, the commission’s project director signed contracts for the construction management fees for the Canberra, Brisbane and Perth projects. These also noted, but didn’t approve, the project’s budgets.
Over the next few months, the construction work happened. An external project manager was brought in to manage the projects and assess the claims of progress from the contractors. The offices were built, the fit-outs — perhaps for the first time in human history — remained on budget. People moved in.
But the first sign that all was not right was when staff realised that the contracts reported on AusTender, the government’s public procurement register, didn’t reflect what had actually been signed.
The contract for the Canberra office fit-out was initially published on AusTender in mid-to-late 2023 as being for $278,310. The actual contract signed for the fit-out was for $21.4 million. The Brisbane office contract was listed as costing $205,840, but contracts were actually signed for for $5.1 million in construction, while the Perth office’s $4.3 million fit-out contract was initially said to be just $185,300. It would later turn out that the contract amounts published on AusTender were just the consulting fees paid to construction managers, a small portion of the overall amount of the contract.
The AusTender contracts were corrected in August 2024, but this incongruence kicked off further inquiries that led to an awkward question: had anyone actually signed off on the spending of tens of millions of dollars?
Approvals had been given at different stages for leases and construction managers, and for the individual payments. The agency had been given $31 million in the 2023-24 federal budget, explicitly for establishing a “secure and independent information and communications technology environment and the expansion of appropriate premises nationally”, so there was no doubt that it was supposed to spend this much on this project.
But no-one in NACC with the necessary authority had formally approved the full expenditure of funds before construction happened, as required under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The project director who had signed off on the invoices did not have the authority to approve an expenditure of this size. Technically, the fit-out just… happened.
Owning up
On October 2, 2024, NACC CEO Philip Reed sheepishly wrote to then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher to tell them that “the non-compliance involves the commitment of funds under three contracts for construction works for the fit-out of commission premises in Canberra, Brisbane and Perth in 2023-24.”
bundy554 on
Sounds like the same issues that the US federal reserve is facing
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One of the first acts of Australia’s new anti-corruption agency was to commit ‘significant non-compliance’ with finance law by failing to officially sign off on tens of millions of dollars of construction costs.
Cam Wilson
Jan 21, 2026
There’s not a lot of public information about the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC)’s offices, which are spread across the country. Even their addresses aren’t publicised.
One of the only things we know comes from NACC commissioner Paul Brereton’s opening address for the commission, held at its new headquarters on July 3, 2023. He said the offices were being “currently fitted out” and that the watchdog’s staff would soon move in.
What Brereton didn’t realise was that this fit-out had broken the law.
Almost immediately after the agency — which is tasked with fighting corruption — had officially launched, it committed what it would later call a “significant non-compliance with finance law”. NACC had signed up for $30 million worth of fit-outs for NACC’s offices in Canberra, Brisbane and Perth without proper approval or disclosure.
While it would later say that the risk of fraud from the error was low, it was an embarrassing early oversight from an agency whose short existence has so far been defined more by its missteps than its accomplishments.
This incident, flagged privately with the government, mentioned in NACC’s annual report and now revealed in documents obtained via a freedom of information request, has not been reported on until now.
A NACC spokesperson said the error had no impact on its budget and that the agency had reported the non-compliance to the government. Since then, it has taken several steps to ensure that this kind of mistake doesn’t happen again, they said.
An early misstep for NACC
When sitting down to prepare NACC’s first-ever annual report for the year 2023-24, staff noticed something was awry.
Its predecessor agency, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI), had negotiated leases and completed design work for offices. According to a “decision minute” — a record of a decision made in a meeting — referenced in a NACC document later on, the ACLEI’s integrity commissioner Jaala Hinchcliffe had approved leases and fit-outs in the lead-up to the agency’s launch.
As one minute from a January 2023 meeting noted: “Upon the engagement of the construction manager and design work undertaken, a detailed budget will be known.” Another meeting in February 2023 noted that the deputy integrity commissioner Petra Gartmann approved engaging the construction manager for two projects, and referred to the fees for the project, but didn’t approve it. Notes from both meetings mention that the expected fit-out would be within the existing budget allocation, but none specifically approved the fit-out expenditure itself.
Soon after the NACC officially came into existence, the commission’s project director signed contracts for the construction management fees for the Canberra, Brisbane and Perth projects. These also noted, but didn’t approve, the project’s budgets.
Over the next few months, the construction work happened. An external project manager was brought in to manage the projects and assess the claims of progress from the contractors. The offices were built, the fit-outs — perhaps for the first time in human history — remained on budget. People moved in.
But the first sign that all was not right was when staff realised that the contracts reported on AusTender, the government’s public procurement register, didn’t reflect what had actually been signed.
The contract for the Canberra office fit-out was initially published on AusTender in mid-to-late 2023 as being for $278,310. The actual contract signed for the fit-out was for $21.4 million. The Brisbane office contract was listed as costing $205,840, but contracts were actually signed for for $5.1 million in construction, while the Perth office’s $4.3 million fit-out contract was initially said to be just $185,300. It would later turn out that the contract amounts published on AusTender were just the consulting fees paid to construction managers, a small portion of the overall amount of the contract.
The AusTender contracts were corrected in August 2024, but this incongruence kicked off further inquiries that led to an awkward question: had anyone actually signed off on the spending of tens of millions of dollars?
Approvals had been given at different stages for leases and construction managers, and for the individual payments. The agency had been given $31 million in the 2023-24 federal budget, explicitly for establishing a “secure and independent information and communications technology environment and the expansion of appropriate premises nationally”, so there was no doubt that it was supposed to spend this much on this project.
But no-one in NACC with the necessary authority had formally approved the full expenditure of funds before construction happened, as required under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The project director who had signed off on the invoices did not have the authority to approve an expenditure of this size. Technically, the fit-out just… happened.
Owning up
On October 2, 2024, NACC CEO Philip Reed sheepishly wrote to then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher to tell them that “the non-compliance involves the commitment of funds under three contracts for construction works for the fit-out of commission premises in Canberra, Brisbane and Perth in 2023-24.”
Sounds like the same issues that the US federal reserve is facing