A new report by the government’s Public Accounts Committee into the Darwin Waterfront Corporation has raised fresh concerns about ongoing “governance failures” and a culture of cover-up at the troubled corporation – that received more than $25 million of taxpayer money last year – with one committee member stating the brief public inquiry held in June was “fundamentally inadequate” and permitted the corporation to avoid accountability by withholding key documents.

The PAC’s final report was tabled in Parliament late Thursday night, with the CLP Government members of the committee finding the Waterfront Corporation did nothing wrong in relation to four narrow terms of reference, but raised unresolved issues it did not properly investigate.

The tabled report was comprised of three sections, including the overall CLP committee members’ final majority report, as well as dissenting reports from Labor MLA Manuel Brown and independent MLA Justine Davis.

Ms Davis’s report was scathing of the inquiry process and the Waterfront’s evidence, voicing “serious concerns about governance failures” at the DWC and a “flawed committee process that prevented proper scrutiny of a statutory body supported by $25.3 million in taxpayer funding”.

“The Public Accounts Committee inquiry was fundamentally inadequate,” Ms Davis wrote. “When documents were requested, the committee was told they are not publicly available, and transparency requests were repeatedly denied.

“I was not satisfied with the inquiry process or the evidence produced, and still [have] significant questions which remain unaddressed.”

The public inquiry was called following the NT Independent’s investigative series into alleged misconduct at the Waterfront, involving the misuse of public funds, mismanaged conflicts of interest, and other governance failures involving Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s husband Sam Burke, DWC chief executive Alastair Shields and former board member Andrew Kirkman.

The CLP-led committee issued a statement on June 3 – the day it held the short public hearing which heard evidence from Mr Shields and board chair Pat Bellot – stating that the committee “unanimously” determined that four allegations were “baseless”, which was then sent out in a media release by Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby.

But Ms Davis wrote that she raised concerns that day with her fellow committee members about why the committee would release the “unusual” public statement before the report was finalised and before any member had time to process what they heard or properly review the documents provided by other government departments.

“I agree with the committee’s finding that the four allegations outlined in the terms of reference could not be substantiated,” she wrote in her dissenting report.

“This was based on the verbal and written evidence provided to the committee, without supporting documentation to justify or clarify that evidence.

“I remain concerned that the inquiry process was not robust enough to properly interrogate the issues raised.”

Ms Davis added that the committee’s “process failures” led to governance concerns about the Waterfront Corporation remaining, including the “apparent circumvention of merit-based recruitment through serial high duties allowances spanning 25 months”; no “formal conflict of interest protocols” for multiple roles held by Mr Burke and Mr Shields; “opaque cost-sharing agreements between entities managed by the same executive”; promotions awarded to Mr Burke “without transparent job evaluation processes”; and the absence of any “performance metrics” or independent review for senior appointments.

“The DWC’s failure to provide conflict of interest registers, board minutes, internal audits, or governance processes demonstrates a concerning lack of transparency for a publicly-funded entity,” Ms Davis wrote.

“Government-dominated committees investigating government entities, inadequate crossbench resourcing, and compressed timeframes undermine the committee system’s accountability function in the Northern Territory’s unicameral Parliament.

“These governance failures create risks to public trust, financial oversight, and democratic accountability.

“The current arrangements [at the DWC] fall short of public sector standards for transparency, merit-based appointments, and conflict of interest management.”

Burke paid $300k for potentially four-days-a-week worth of work: Report

The majority PAC report, authored by the three CLP members on the committee Clinton Howe, Laurie Zio and Brian O’Gallagher, reiterated the committee’s statement on June 3 that none of the four allegations were substantiated.

Those allegations included that Mr Burke was the recipient of a “made-up”, part-time job that was unadvertised resulting in a $60,000 salary increase via a temporary higher duties allowance; that the higher duties allowance continued for six years; the appropriateness of public funds being transferred between the DWC and AustralAsia Railway Corporation; and the signing of a four-year executive contract for Mr Burke that was also not advertised and not subject to any job evaluation review.

While suggesting those points were not substantiated, the report raised issues that were not answered by the DWC at the hearing, including the nature of Mr Burke’s dual roles as the deputy chief executive of the DWC and the chief executive of AustralAsia Railway Corporation (AARC), in which he is paid $300,000 on an executive level two contract for the two part-time jobs.

According to submitted documents, Mr Burke’s former unadvertised part-time job in the Department of Trade Business and Innovation, that was awarded to him in 2018 on a higher duties allowance, was for three days a week, while working his Waterfront job two days a week.

A submission to the PAC by AARC showed the previous chief executive of the railway corporation only worked two days a week, which would mean Mr Burke is currently working four days a week.

The committee focused on Mr Burke receiving higher duties for more than two years through rotating higher duties allowances for the two roles that had to be re-started every six months to avoid breaching the Public Sector Employment Management Act, which the corporation contradictorily claimed it did not have to follow.

“The proportional allocation of Mr Burke’s duties between the DWC and AARC during this period is unclear to the committee,” the report stated.

But the committee did not inquire further into how many days a week Mr Burke currently works, or worked when he was appointed to the AARC role while not subject to a public hiring process.

The report dismissed that the DTBI job was “made-up” by stating that Mr Burke was offered the unadvertised role in 2018 by Waterfront board member Anne Tan, after she determined unilaterally that he “could successfully perform the duties of the position” in the department that she also held a senior role in, adding that recruitment processes like that were not “an uncommon arrangement for hard-to-fill positions”.

The report did not interrogate that matter further and was satisfied with the multiple higher duties allowances paid to Mr Burke because they were ended and restarted before the six month limit expired for more than two years. Mr Burke held the DTBI job for a year, the report said, before being given the AARC job that also attracted a higher duties allowance.

The CLP members of the committee also found there was nothing unusual about Mr Shields transferring public money between DWC and AARC to pay Mr Burke via a “ledger funds transfer”, but supported Mr Shields’s suggestion at the hearing that the public’s understanding of “cost sharing arrangements” be improved.

It offered no suggestions on how to achieve that.

The CLP members also suggested “community confidence” in the work of both the DWC and AARC could be “further strengthened”, but it was unclear what they recommended to achieve that aim.

Ms Davis pointed out that the committee accepted Mr Burke’s ECO2 contract renewal as “routine”, despite no independent performance review being undertaken, no KPIs cited, and that the renewal “appeared to be based entirely on the opinion of the CEO (Mr Shields), without documented input from the broader board or external reviewers”.

She also raised concerns over no independent oversight mechanism in place to document how time, staff and financial resources are allocated between the DWC and AARC and that the two boards are “reliant on the same individual for reporting, budget submissions and operational leadership”. Accepting that this was the historic practice was not sufficient to establish “best practice”, she wrote.

The PAC did not explore other unresolved conflict of interest matters involving Mr Kirkman and Mr Shields, including Mr Kirkman’s wife being hired for an unadvertised role at the DWC six months after Mr Kirkman advocated a pay rise for Mr Shields last year while a Waterfront board member and while he was acting head public servant.

The committee also did not investigate recent revelations that Mr Burke was, or is, a director of a company called Place Leaders Asia Pacific, which was the recipient of an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money through the Waterfront Corporation he is the deputy chief executive of. It was revealed last month that Ms Finocchiaro did not declare that directorship on her register of members’ interests in 2022, in breach of the Public Disclosures Act, but disclosed it two years later amid intense scrutiny of politicians’ interests.

DWC needs more public scrutiny: Labor dissenting report

In his dissenting report, Labor MLA Manuel Brown said the Waterfront Corporation’s “structure and governance model…by its very nature invites ongoing scrutiny”.

“To ensure the corporation can operate effectively and with the full confidence of Territorians, it would be appropriate for the Government to consider reforms that enhance transparency and accountability,” he wrote.

Mr Brown added it was “remarkable” that the DWC was not under any obligation to manage its employment practices under the Public Sector Employment and Management Act (PSEMA), and recommended the government consider ensuring “the corporation is subject to the same standards as other public agencies”.

He joined Ms Davis in calling for the Waterfront Corporation to make its board minutes and conflict of interest registers public.

“…It is reasonable that the public be afforded access to a register of board members’ declared conflicts of interest and to redacted board minutes, just as they are in local government settings such as the City of Darwin,” Mr Brown wrote.

“It is worth noting that DWC board members likely receive higher remuneration than most elected councillors in the Territory, yet have less scrutiny applied to them.”

He also suggested the government set aside time at annual Estimates hearings to interrogate the DWC’s spending and operations.

Integrity of government committees raised

Ms Davis raised further concerns about the entire PAC process, including the rushed nature of the inquiry, questions to the DWC going unanswered while evidence, such as employment and payroll history, was not provided, as well as the government not providing crossbench members with adequate resources to do their jobs.

Ms Davis drew particular attention to Mr Shields’s assertions that there were “processes” in place to manage conflicts of interest, but did not provide them because he claimed it was “not common practice” to do so. He also refused to release the board minutes, conflicts of interest register and internal audits because he determined they would not be “of any particular interest to the public”.

“These responses were deeply concerning,” Ms Davis wrote. “The DWC is funded with $25,258,000 in taxpayer funds. It is not enough to say that transparency is not standard practice – we should be asking why it is not and whether it should be.”

She went on to take aim at the government’s lack of resourcing for crossbench MLAs, which has seen no research assistance or preparation help for any crossbench member on a committee. Ms Davis said in this particular circumstance she was given departmental documentation at 5pm on Monday and had to be ready for the hearing by 2:30pm the next day, adding this short time frame had the ability to affect the performance of the committee.

“The refusal to share documents, the absence of meaningful transparency, and the Government’s dominance of the process raise serious questions about the integrity of committee inquiries in the Northern Territory,” Ms Davis wrote.

“The role of the Public Accounts Committee is to hold the Government to account for its use of public money. In this case, the process issues outlined above meant we could not do that effectively.”

She added that the CLP committee members’ conclusion that there is no need to investigate the DWC further is “premature and insufficient”.