The home affairs department paid $16,000 to a senior official to rent his house through Airbnb for staff who needed to quarantine after returning from overseas.
The deal was part of a $522,000 program to accommodate returning staff and comply with Australian Capital Territory Covid quarantine requirements.
In Senate estimates on Monday the Labor senator Raff Ciccone said it was “mind-blowing” the department rented a house from the unnamed first assistant secretary on the basis it was the only suitable property available.
But departmental secretary, Michael Pezzullo, defended the official’s conduct as “proper” because he identified the conflict of interest and offered to opt out of the program.
According to officials, the department intended to use accommodation at the Australian National University for quarantine from September 2021, but was advised by ACT Health on 23 August to find alternatives.
The chief operating officer, Justine Saunders, said that the department contacted owners of suitable properties through Airbnb “without knowing who the owners of the properties were”.
Only “freestanding houses” were considered suitable under ACT guidelines, Pezzullo said, and there were “no other properties available” that fit the bill, according to Saunders.
After he was contacted by a government department to rent his house, the home affairs officer contacted a senior member of the department to seek advice in relation to a conflict of interest, said Saunders.
Pezzullo said: “The officer in question … went out of his way to suggest ‘this is going to be an issue in Estimates and elsewhere – best if I don’t participate in the program’. I think that’s exemplary conduct.”
But due to the lack of accommodation available at short notice, the department proceeded with the rental, paying $15,981 to rent the employee’s property from 12 September to 30 November.
Pezzullo said he had inquired into the contract and he was satisfied that “unless something else comes to my notice there was proper conduct engaged in”.
Pezzullo said that if the officer attempted to disguise the transaction, or had not drawn it to the department’s attention, or had not offered to opt out of the program, he “might have a similarly jaundiced view” of it as Ciccone, but “those conditions aren’t apparent”.
In total, 72 federal government officials including ministerial staffers returning from overseas were housed at a cost of $522,067 including $344,137 on accommodation and the rest on Covid-19 testing, cleaning and transportation cost.
The department gave details of 18 properties ranging from one at Kaleen costing $155 a night to a $390-a-night rental in Kambah, but declined to identify which was owned by the first assistant secretary.
Saunders said the department “explored hotels and apartments knowing they would be lower cost options, but they weren’t agreed by the ACT government due to the higher Covid risk”.
“The other option we explored was … for officers to share facilities, noting they were homes – that wasn’t agreed to in all instances,” she said.
“So as a result of our understanding of the demand, and meeting ACT government requirements, the option that was agreed to by the ACT government and home affairs as the most suitable was properties that could be identified through Airbnb.”
