by Ganesh Sahathevan
ABC's financial statements were audited by KPMG which has a history of failed audits.
While the Australian National Audit Office (ANOA) is the auditor on record (see page 139) , ANAO contracted KPMG to provide audit services to the ABC on its behalf (see page 152).
KPMG has a colourful history; the USD 80 Million it paid in settlement to the Government Of Malaysia for its negligence with regards the 1MDB theft is one of its more prominent misadventures. KPMG's attempts to evade responsibility in that matter were a matter of public record since 2015.
Coming back to the ABC, in 2017, KPMG earned in addition to its audit fee additional fees of $1,650 (2016 $48,100) for services that were separately contracted by the ABC (see page 100).
Given the above a forensic audit by a non-Big 4 firm of accounting specialist of KPMG's audit and other work at ABC going back to at least 2016 is required. Consultancie and content creation contracts should be the focu. For the reasons why see story below.
TO BE READ WITH
ABC employee benefits expenditure rose AUD 35.266 Million in 2022, "partly due to the increased use of employees for content creation" - No indication of content contracts being put out to tender
by Ganesh Sahathevan
The extract above is from page 148 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Annual Report 2022. There is no indication anywhere in the 2022 annual report that these content contracts were put out to tender.
There is no explanation as to why existing employees were paid extra, or whether some employees were offered contract creation contracts.
There is no indication of how much the employees were paid, or what the content creation contracts were worth. There is also no indication of who these employees were.
The claim that there was "on offsetting reduction against suppliers' expenses" states the obvious. The real question is what the cost might have been if these contracts had been put out to tender.
END
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