[Peetwo]

ANAO Aviation Support Audit out; & Mandarin Atkinson gone - 

Via Dic Doc...

Albanese shakes up public service


Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has axed a number of department chiefs linked to the Coalition in a shake-up of top public servants.

What we know:

• Diplomat Jan Adams, Australia’s ambassador to Japan, and former ambassador for climate change under the Rudd government, will replace Kathryn Campbell as Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary (The Conversation);
  
• Campbell, who will be moved to a defence role, had been in the job less than a year, after being embroiled in the Robodebt disaster as secretary of the department of social services;
  
• Gordon de Brouwer will be appointed as secretary for public sector reform, after helping lead the Thodey review — largely ignored by the former government — that had recommended changes to make the public service more independent;
  
• Jenny Wilkinson, a former head of the Parliamentary Budget Office, will become head of the Finance Department (The Mandarin);
  
• Experienced state public servant Jim Betts becomes secretary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, replacing Simon Atkinson, who was regarded by Labor as too close to the Coalition;
  
• The new Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will be headed by David Fredericks;
  

    Albanese will however keep controversial Coalition appointments including  Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, and Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy (RiotACT);

Three of the four new secretaries are women, compared to the former prime minister’s 2019 shake-up, when three of five secretaries sacked were women.

Next:

Aviation billions vanish into thin air


More than $5bn in Covid-19 support handed out to the aviation sector was not adequately monitored, a new audit report has found.

What we know:

• The federal government established a suite of support measures in response to the pandemic to assist the beleaguered sector, which was also eligible for the JobKeeper scheme (The New Daily);
  
• The measures included fuel rebates, airport grants, underwriting flight costs and waiving land tax payments;
  
• Qantas received the most financial assistance, including more than $1bn in government support measures and $856m in JobKeeper;
  
• The next highest recipient was Virgin Australia, with $330m in support measures and $285m in JobKeeper;
  
• The audit found the Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications department overseeing the spending did not adequately monitor its impact;
  
• A Transport Workers’ Union survey of 1100 workers found nearly half of those sacked by Qantas during the pandemic are still looking for permanent work two years on;
  
• Qantas performance indicators are now plummeting, with the airline now the worst in the country — a decline blamed on outsourcing (The Saturday Paper);
  
• Australia’s air traffic control agency meanwhile is relying on hundreds of hours of overtime as it struggles to fill shifts in airport towers, threatening air traffic services
  

ANAO audit report link: 

COVID-19 Support to the Aviation Sector

PUBLISHED Wednesday 22 June 2022



Recommendation no. 1

Paragraph 3.67

The department develop mechanisms to:

• monitor and evaluate the extent to which the suite of COVID-19 aviation sector support measures is achieving the three objectives set by the Australian Government; and
  
• provide oversight of the total amount of support provided to individual recipients and the sector.
  

Department response: Agreed

 
MTF...P2