A senior Tourism Australia employee and two of their China-based colleagues were fired last year for blowing $137,441 of taxpayer money on personal holiday trips, Crikey can reveal.
The federal agency became aware of the incident on October 20 last year and made the trio pay back the money, but managed to keep the incident out of the headlines until now.
“Each had undertaken personal travel booked and paid through Tourism Australia’s travel agent,” a spokesperson said when contacted by Crikey.
“The individuals involved have paid Tourism Australia back the full amount and they are no longer with the organisation.”
Inside the agency, and in the tourism industry more broadly, news of the incident travelled quickly after the firings were announced at an all-staff meeting in December, sources said.
“It was shocking. It felt like a slap in the face to a lot of people,” one of the sources told Crikey. “Most people in Tourism Australia absolutely do the right thing, are passionate about their jobs, and take seriously that it’s taxpayer money we’re dealing with.”
A current and a former Tourism Australia employee told Crikey one of the people who was fired was a senior staff member who worked out of offices in Australia. The other two sacked employees were more junior and based in China, the sources said. Crikey contacted both junior ex-staffers for comment but didn’t hear back.
Tourism Australia refused to confirm or deny that the senior employee was one of the people let go, citing Privacy Act obligations, but acknowledged it has a new staff member acting in that role and said it plans to recruit for the same role “in due course”. The person acting in the role lists January 2024 as their start date on their LinkedIn page, and they were recruited externally.
An email sent to the Tourism Australia address of the senior employee in March was answered with an automatic message that said “[they] no longer [work] at Tourism Australia”.
The senior employee declined to comment when reached on the phone by Crikey last week.
Tourism Australia does not appear to have posted job advertisements for the person’s job and made no public announcement about what had happened.
But managing director Philippa Harrison told an all-staff meeting on December 7 about a “breach of policies” and announced the senior staffer’s departure, a source said. The Tourism Australia spokesperson said “all TA staff were reminded of their obligations under TA policies” at the meeting.
It’s not clear how the trio was caught, but Crikey understands agency teams are regularly audited.
After the breach was discovered on October 20, the agency did a sweep of its records, the spokesperson said: “Tourism Australia moved swiftly to conduct a comprehensive review of travel records, dating back several years, and found no further policy breaches.”
Tourism Australia said “all reporting obligations were complied with” but refused to go into specifics about any referrals made.
The federal agency, which is responsible for promoting Australia as a tourist destination, employs 186 staff and has offices in Sydney, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and the US.
It’s most famous for the 2006 ad campaign “So where the bloody hell are you?”, which it launched under the managing directorship of future prime minister Scott Morrison.
Its current flagship campaign is taglined “Come and say g’day” and features a mascot called Ruby the Roo. It’s reported to have cost $125 million.
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