The audit office will examine a $1.84m federal government grant to the training college of which former Family First senator Bob Day was a director.
On Thursday the deputy auditor general wrote to Labor’s shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, to say the Australian National Audit Office would investigate the Department of Education and Training’s apprenticeship training alternative delivery pilots program.
In November Dreyfus had asked the auditor general to examine the program, which gave a $1.84m grant to the North East Vocational College. Day was a director of the college and had been chairman for 10 years at the time.
The ANAO’s response, released on Monday, stated the audit would consider the effectiveness of the program and whether it was established in accordance with commonwealth grant rules. It will report by April 2017.
Dreyfus said that according to reports the grants were made without a competitive tender process, only a reference from a government-controlled apprenticeships advisory group convened by then-assistant education and training minister Simon Birmingham.
The program also gave two grants of equal size to the Master Builders Association and the National Electrical Communications Association, but Dreyfus complained that unlike these bodies the North East Vocational College was not a peak body.
He questioned whether the program represented “value for money”, given it amounted to about $90,000 for each of 20 construction apprentices at the college.
“In my view, this sizeable grant was not justified by any merits-based decision-making process,” he said.
Dreyfus questioned whether the grant was given to help secure Day’s vote in the Senate, and noted he was “personally involved in lobbying ministers to obtain the grant”.
Dreyfus also criticised the merits of the program which he said would shift the financial burden of apprentices from the construction sector to the tertiary education budget, saddling apprentice builders with student loans.
Day dismissed the suggestion the grant may have been given to influence his vote as “typical scurrilous allegations by Labor”.
“Any examination of my voting record shows there is no connection between the college grant and my vote,” he told Guardian Australia.
An education department spokeswoman said the department was aware of the audit and will cooperate in the usual way.
In November an education department spokeswoman said that all grants were made “in accordance with the program’s grant guidelines”.
Birmingham said the department had advised him Day had no financial stake in the college.
“This is a 10-year-old, not-for-profit, community-run vocational college that has helped hundreds of apprentices and Bob Day donated his time to them as an unpaid director on their board,” Birmingham said.
“Mr Day was as entitled as any other member of parliament to advocate on behalf of community organisations in his electorate.”
Day resigned from the Senate in November due to his building companies owing millions to unsecured creditors.
Immediately after Day’s resignation his eligibility for election was referred to the high court, which it has yet to determine. The referral relates to whether Day had an indirect pecuniary interest in the Commonwealth’s lease of his electoral office.
