Labor will write to the public service commissioner for advice over revelations a senior public servant destroyed notebooks which included notes taken during a hastily convened sports grant teleconference, called after the then Sport Australia chief learned of the colour-coded spreadsheets being used by Bridget McKenzie’s office to award the grants.
Outgoing health department secretary, Glenys Beauchamp, who retires from the department at the close of business on Friday, told the Senate inquiry examining the administration of the government’s $100m sports grant program that she had destroyed all her personal notebooks while cleaning out her office at the end of January.
Beauchamp had been due to retire at the end of last month, but agree to stay on as department head while her successor, the chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, dealt with the coronavirus outbreak.
But the destruction of her notebooks, which may have included the only notes of a late-night teleconference between herself, the former Sport Australia head, Kate Palmer, and the board chairman, John Wylie, after Palmer learned of the colour-coded electoral spreadsheets being used to award the grants, has raised another issue in the sports rort affair.
Greens senator Janet Rice described Beauchamp’s actions as “strange”, given her long career in the public service.
“These notebooks included details of meetings held in relation to the sports rorts scandal,” she said. “Why would the secretary destroy these relevant documents when she knew she would be giving evidence today on the sports grants program?
“Ms Beauchamp also said today that she saw the Coalition’s colour-coded spreadsheet days before the election was called, and organised an urgent meeting with Sport Australia to discuss it and their evidence to Senate estimates. She could not recall if there were any records kept of this meeting.”
Beauchamp told the committee she had not taken any advice when destroying her notes, which she described as her personal “scratchings”.
“As a private citizen, I should not have notebooks and things after midnight tonight,” she said. “They’re just my scratchings that I provide down in a notebook of things I might have to follow up on, and just a reminder to me.”
She could not remember the extent of the notes from that late night meeting, or whether she passed on any information to be officially recorded by the department.
Under the commonwealth archival law, some records must be kept, but others considered to be of “low importance” can be destroyed.
Non-government members of the committee examining what has become known as “sports rorts” expressed shock when told of the notebooks’ destruction.
Labor senator Katy Gallagher said she would write to the public service commissioner to look into the matter.
“And if need be, to provide further guidance about what constitutes a record and how those records need to be handled,” she said.
“At the end of the day, these records are gone, so they are lost forever.”
Gallagher said there was a “broader” issue of “a very significant reluctance to provide any information to the committee” charged with investigating the program’s administration.
“So we have sought documents from Sport Australia, we’ve asked for documents from health today, they have taken it on notice, Sport Australia has taken it on notice – the government has refused to provide documents to the Senate – so there is something that exists in these documents that the government doesn’t want us to have access to, that is clear,” she said.
“The issue that we will take up more broadly, about the protection of documents, is to make sure that even at the lowest levels, to the highest levels, that there is an understanding about the importance of preserving records that are created in the performance of your duties as a commonwealth public servant, and that those need to be adhered to at all times.”
The non-government committee members also seemed taken aback to learn Palmer had been “surprised” to see the colour-coded spreadsheet McKenzie’s office was using to award the grants.
Palmer said she saw the spreadsheet for the first time before walking into a Senate estimates hearing in April – days before the 2019 election was called – after it was handed to her by a staffer.
“A teleconference was held between myself, the chair of the board, and myself … It was to discuss that we had seen and received this spreadsheet,” Palmer told the inquiry.
She had no notes from the meeting but that it had been called to make sure Sport Australia was meeting its obligations. Palmer left the organisation at the end of last month, having announced in October last year she would not seek to renew her contract when it expired.
The committee learned no more about the timing of the grant approvals, which were not emailed to Sport Australia until 11 April, 17 minutes after the government entered the caretaker period, on a briefing note dated 4 April from McKenzie’s office.
Rice said the government had treated the process with contempt.
“The Coalition is actively subverting democracy with this cover-up,” she said.
“Morrison still refuses to release the Gaetjens report, the 28 different versions of the colour-coded spreadsheet or the 136 emails between his office and then-minister McKenzie.”
