Former cabinet minister Stuart Robert met consulting firm Accenture to discuss a federal project worth $111 million after his close friend David Milo had been trying to help the firm win lucrative government contracts.
The meeting triggered probity concerns over Robert’s decision to discuss the sweeping visa processing deal at a sensitive point before the winning bidder was announced, raising new questions about his links to people who had helped Accenture in the past.
The new details add to a series of revelations about Robert’s help for Milo and Synergy 360 over several years when he was a backbencher and a senior minister, including meetings withThe Australian National Audit Office highlighted the meeting between Robert and Accenture in a Robert told this masthead it was ridiculous to ask him about Milo’s relationship with Accenture and that the July 2021 meeting had been cleared by probity advisers. But he declined to answer a question about whether he had disclosed his relationship with Milo.“As it turned out, for this project I did sit with the probity adviser and they presented me a list of everyone ever connected with any of these Home Affairs projects and their investors, directors and advisers.
It said Synergy 360 would provide “political and/or government marketing services to assist Accenture business activities within the Australian federal government” and this included finding new tenders or business opportunities. “We have searched our financial systems including our contracts, procurement system and our payment system, and have not found any evidence that we have ever engaged the services of Synergy 360, nor made any payment to them.”
When Home Affairs attempted a different project with the permissions capability in October 2020, it was meant to start with visa processing and extend to citizenship, customs and personnel security clearances in the hope of creating a system that could be used by other departments.
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