A former senior Howard government media adviser has been awarded a $190,000 public relations contract with Australia’s bushfire recovery agency without a full tender process.
Guardian Australia can reveal Richard Forbes, who was an adviser to the former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Mark Vaile, is being paid to produce videos documenting the recovery of communities affected by the “black summer” bushfires.
A contract notice published on the government’s AusTender website on Christmas Eve says the deal with Forbes’s company, Forbes Lowndes Pty Ltd, was reached by limited tender – rather than a full competitive tender process – because of “advantageous conditions arising only in the very short term, not routine procurements”.
The services are to be provided over a five-month period that started in late November and will end in April, at a cost of $189,000.
The National Bushfire Recovery Agency said the project would be jointly funded by the agency and Tourism Australia.
“Forbes Lowndes Pty Ltd provided an innovative proposal directly to the National Bushfire Recovery Agency to deliver a project to research, document and disseminate (through film) the recovery of communities affected by the 2019/20 bushfires,” a spokesperson for the agency said.
“The project deliverables are intended to support tourism, the economy and mental health and wellbeing in these communities.”
Asked why a full tender could not be done, the spokesperson said the procurement approach “was in accordance with the commonwealth procurement rules, including a value-for-money assessment”.
But the Labor senator Murray Watt, who is the opposition spokesperson for disaster and emergency management, said it was another case of the federal government putting undue emphasis on marketing.
Watt said a year after the “black summer” bushfires, too many victims had been left behind.
“The Morrison government can’t seem to help bushfire victims who are still living in caravans, but it’s happy to pay its mates to do even more marketing,” he told Guardian Australia.
Senate estimates heard in October the federal government had until then spent just $717m out of the $2bn fund to help bushfire victims.
But the bushfire agency argues $1.2bn has been spent, based on also including $471.8m that had been incurred by state governments and was subject to reimbursement.
Andrew Colvin, the former federal police commissioner who heads the agency, told the estimates hearing that communities were interested in results rather than “what the accounting treatment is behind the money that’s in their account”.
Forbes’s website includes a testimonial from Vaile, for whom he was senior media adviser between January 2005 and September 2007, shortly before the Howard government’s election loss.
The website also features a photo of Forbes alongside Scott Morrison at the Daily Telegraph-sponsored Bush Summit in 2019.
Forbes offers a range of services, including political consultancy, with his website boasting that he “has strong political connections in ministerial offices and is trusted across a wide and varied network of influencers”.
Forbes – whose company is registered in Palm Beach on Queensland’s Gold Coast – was contacted for comment.
It is not the first time that contracts issued by the bushfire recovery agency have been questioned over the political links of their recipients.
Peter Crone, who was a senior economic adviser to John Howard and helped conduct the Tony Abbott-ordered commission of audit of government spending, was paid $136,000 under a contract to provide economic advice to the agency.
Labor raised the Crone contract in parliamentary question time in October.
Officials from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet told Senate estimates in October the contract for Crone was going to be worth $242,000, but the actual spend was $136,000. Crone finished his work around the middle of last year.
Asked to reveal who recommended Crone to PM&C, the department’s deputy secretary, Stephanie Foster, pointed to Morrison’s office.
“From my memory it was the prime minister’s office,” she told Senate estimates.
“We were looking for ways to bolster the capability of the bushfire agency as quickly as we could. Mr Crone has a very strong reputation for his economic analytic work. He’s well known to the economists in the department. He was able to start work for us in a very short timeframe.”
Last month the Morrison government appointed Crone to a five-year term as a commissioner at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Labor has accused the government during the past year of being more interested in photo opportunities than practical delivery. New figures show the Morrison government spent $128m on advertising last financial year, including $5.2m on market research for the ad campaigns.
Morrison’s department and his political office recently rejected freedom of information requests for access to taxpayer-funded research undertaken by Jim Reed, a long-term researcher for Liberal party pollster Crosby Textor.
