Health department investigating possible code of conduct breaches

Health officials were grilled over the department's handling of the program during a parliamentary committee hearing on Friday, with chief operating officer Charles Wann confirming code of conduct investigations were under way.

It comes after the national audit office found the department deliberately breached Commonwealth grant rules and relevant legal requirements in some cases while administering the program.

Its report stated that the department did not develop grant guidelines for seven of 108 grants and in at least three instances "this represented a deliberate decision by senior management to not comply with finance law".

Asked by Labor MP Julian Hill if any code of conduct actions had been undertaken in response to breaches of finance law, Mr Wann said "we have well established processes ... and we're following those".

When pressed further on whether code of conduct investigations were under way, Mr Wann confirmed "that's correct".

READ MORE:

The community health and hospitals program was announced in 2018 by then-prime minister Scott Morrison, a few months ahead of the 2019 federal election.

The aim of the program was to fund health projects like cancer treatments and drug and alcohol clinics for communities across the country.

But The Canberra Times found that almost five years since the former government announced the program, only one-third of the projects were operational.

Health officials however told the hearing the program included both service delivery and infrastructure projects and "a large proportion" of the those were either completed or delivering services.

"Almost up to 60 per cent," Mr Wann said.

"We're kind of in that sense, if you look at it in the timeframe, on track and at this stage, I think most, if not all projects are scheduled to finish by the end of the profile for the program.

"it's just a matter of, I guess, framing it a little bit."

Other findings from the auditor general showed that the former government selected most recipients without assessment or guidance and at a speed that forced the department to "monitor the media to know which projects had been selected".

Mr Hill said the health department enabled "the misuse and misallocation of billions of dollars of public funding by failing basic public administration standards".

Mr Wann said there was a "strong delivery focus" but denied seeing any "motivation of malintent" or personal bias from the health department.

"There was a very strong delivery focus, absolutely, to try and give effect to the government's wishes," he said.

Following the hearing, Mr Hill told The Canberra Times "the maladministration by the health department was gravely concerning".

"It's appropriate that there are changes and consequences for this," he said.

"The Liberal government, though, is also complicit as yet again they allocated billions of dollars of funds with no transparency against their own processes.

"It seems clear that the department was under extreme pressure from Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt to shovel the money out the door to their hand-picked projects."