The Anti-Corruption Commission Wrote Agencies a Script for Senate Estimates. It Was in the Briefing Pack.

An estimates briefing pack is the folder an official takes into a Senate committee room. The Department of Infrastructure’s pack for the supplementary budget estimates hearing of 4 November 2024 ran to 630 pages and 86 documents, and it was published on the department’s disclosure log on 20 January 2025.

Document 85 is not the department’s. It is a four-page publication of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and it is a script.

What was released#

One consolidated PDF of 630 pages, 16.8 MB, released in part. The agency stamped each page with a document number in the top right — “FOI 25-194 - Document 1” through to “Document 86” — but did not paginate the compiled release, so references below give both the agency’s document number and the PDF page.

Documents 1 to 84 are the department’s own subject briefs, each in a standard format — Talking Points, Key Issues, Background, Financial Information — cleared by a named senior officer and dated September or October 2024. Subjects run from office accommodation and consultancy spend to Inland Rail, the Brisbane 2032 venues, Norfolk Island governance and airport slot management.

Redactions are made under s 22(1)(a)(ii) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 for irrelevant material, principally direct phone numbers in the clearance blocks.

We read the whole pack at a skim and about a hundred pages closely, choosing briefs where a statement could be checked against another document or a published source. This article reports two of them. It is not a summary of the pack, and a reader interested in Inland Rail or the Brisbane venues should go to the PDF.

The guidance#

Document 85 is titled “Guidance for agencies regarding questions about NACC matters” and is footed “Last updated: November 2024”. It opens:

Agencies are requested to take care in answering questions to avoid disclosing information that could prejudice NACC operations and/or the rights of those involved.

This guidance includes general principles, followed by example responses to common or likely questions.

The document is careful about its own status, and this should be said before anything else:

The following constitutes general guidance, not directions. Agencies may wish to seek legal advice for specific matters.

It also states, accurately, that the NACC Act’s secrecy provisions “do not generally prevent the provision of information required by a parliamentary committee”, citing Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice.

The reasons it gives for caution are the ordinary reasons an investigative body gives. Disclosing that a matter has been referred “may alert persons of interest, prejudice current or potential investigations, and unfairly damage reputations”, and may prejudice “the rights of people involved in NACC investigations, including to impartial adjudication of matters under investigation”. These are real considerations, and a reader should hold them alongside what follows.

Counting referrals#

The sixth general principle addresses the simplest question a senator can ask: how many matters has your agency referred?

Agencies can provide general information to assist Committees. For example, it may be appropriate to outline an agency’s internal arrangements to manage NACC referrals. However, revealing the number of referrals made may lead to speculation about the specific matters referred, and may put those being investigated on notice of an investigation that would otherwise be confidential. Agencies will need to consider their specific circumstances including the number of referrals, the size of their agency and media reporting on specific matters in considering their response.

A bare count of referrals carries no names. The guidance’s argument is that in a small agency, or where a matter has been in the news, a number can be triangulated. That is a coherent argument. It also has the effect that the most basic measure of how much corruption reporting is happening across the Commonwealth becomes a matter for each agency’s discretion.

If pressed, and if pressed further#

The second half of the document is seven questions with drafted answers. The questions are the ones a committee would ask, written in the voice of the committee:

Has the [department] made any referrals to the NACC? (and about what?)

Is your Minister aware of the referral/s?

Can the department confirm that a specific matter is not under NACC investigation?

The answers are tiered. Under the first question the base answer is followed by a heading, “If pressed for details:”, with a longer answer, and then by a second heading, “If pressed further:”, with a shorter and firmer one:

It is not appropriate to comment on the specifics of any referrals. To do so may prejudice current or potential investigations by the NACC.

Beneath that sits a bracketed instruction to the official reading it:

[Consider claiming Public Interest Immunity – see General principle 5 above]

The same bracket appears under question 4 and again under question 7. Question 4’s fallback is even more compressed: “[Consider claiming public interest immunity. See General Principle 5]”.

Public interest immunity is the mechanism by which the executive declines to give a parliamentary committee information. It is a legitimate mechanism with established grounds, and general principle 5 sets those grounds out. What Document 85 does is put the prompt to use it into a prepared script, at the point where a senator has asked twice.

There is a second feature worth noting. Question 5 asks whether an agency can confirm a matter is not under investigation, and the guidance advises against answering that too — because answering it selectively would reveal the cases where the answer is different. The effect, stated in general principle 5, is that it “may not be in the public interest to engage in public discussion about whether or not a particular matter is or is not the subject of a referral or NACC investigation”, with the words “is or is not” underlined in the original.

We make no claim that any agency used these lines, and nothing in the pack shows the department doing so. What the release shows is that the script was in the folder.

Two failed attempts to rent an office#

The other thread worth reporting is Document 2, brief SB24-000171, “Future Workplaces”, cleared on 3 October 2024 by the department’s Chief People Officer, Rachel Houghton.

The department is consolidating its Canberra offices before major lease expirations in mid-2026. The brief’s Talking Points give the timeline: a Request for Expression of Interest went to market on 8 March 2024 and closed on 3 April; a review in July 2024 determined that a further reduction in net lettable area could be achieved; and on 4 September 2024 “the department made the decision to close the REOI and re-approach the market”.

By then the process had advanced a long way:

An Evaluation Committee assessed the REOI proposals received and shortlisted the respondents deemed suitable, in accordance with the evaluation criteria.

The shortlisted respondents were formally notified of the closure of the REOI process on 10 September 2024.

Bidders had been evaluated and shortlisted before the process was abandoned. The stated reason is that the department’s space requirement had fallen below what the REOI’s own terms permitted, with advice from an external probity adviser.

The Background records that this was the second attempt:

A previous Request for Proposal (RFP) process was undertaken in late 2022 with Austrade. This RFP failed to secure suitable premises and the process closed.

Two market processes, neither producing a lease, with the deadline of mid-2026 lease expirations approaching.

The table that is not there#

The Financial Information section of that brief has two numbered points. The first reads:

While the below table represents the total costs, including previous procurement processes, the current approved project budget is $4.9m. The budget reflects the level of risk and complexity relating to this project.

There is no table below it. The lower half of the page is blank, and no exemption is marked where a table would sit.

We do not know whether the table was withheld, removed in compiling the release, or never present. We are recording it because the sentence tells a reader that a figure for total costs including the failed 2022 process exists and was put in front of the Secretary, and because that figure is the one a person reading this brief would most want.

What can be said from the released page is only this: the approved project budget for the accommodation project is $4.9 million, and the total cost — which the brief says is higher, since it includes previous procurement processes — is not visible in the release.

What the documents do not say#

Whether this department has referred anything to the NACC. Document 85 is generic guidance issued to agencies. Nothing in the pack indicates a referral by this department, and we are not suggesting one.

Whether the guidance was used. The pack shows it was carried into the hearing. It does not show it being relied on.

How widely the guidance went. The document is addressed to “agencies” generally. We do not know how many received it, and it does not appear on the NACC’s website in this form.

The accommodation total cost. See above. The table is not in the release.

Most of the other 84 briefs. There is a great deal in this pack we have not reported — Inland Rail cost pressures, the Brisbane 2032 venue funding split after the Gabba decision, a business case Infrastructure Australia declined to accept, rates non-payment on Norfolk Island, and material about departmental staff that we have deliberately left alone because it concerns identifiable individual employees. Each would need its own verification.

How to check this#

The single PDF is linked at the top of this page. The compiled release has no page numbers of its own, so each quotation above is cited by the agency’s stamped document number — Document 85, Document 2 — with the PDF page given in brackets where it helps: the NACC guidance runs from PDF page 620 to 623, and the Future Workplaces brief is PDF pages 3 and 4.

The file has a clean text layer, so every quotation can be extracted and compared directly. Where the department’s own brief contains a grammatical slip, we have kept it.