Minister 'shocked' by relaxed approach taken to public accountability by government agencies

The Internal Affairs Minister has taken a swipe at government agencies taking a relaxed approach to public accountability despite being responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Brooke van Velden was fronting MPs at Parliament on Wednesday at a scrutiny hearing where she revealed being "shocked" by how little effort the Department of Internal Affairs monitoring team had put in to its role with Fire and Emergency.

"From the start, too often the advice I received reflected word-for-word what Fire and Emergency was saying, rather than doing an analysis of whether or not that was true and accurate and factual," she told MPs.

She said the monitoring wasn't at a satisfactory level, and while improvements have been made, it remains an issue across the public service.

"I think there has been quite a lot of hands-off approach from previous governments across the board.

"I wear other hats where the monitoring of teams hasn't been what I believe to be sufficient for the level of money that is being given to different organisations across government," she said.

"It's really important we take public accountability very seriously when dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than just ticking boxes."

Van Velden used her experience with Fire and Emergency (FENZ), which sits within her Internal Affairs ministerial portfolio, to make her points.

She said the department she is responsible for needed to be putting more pressure on FENZ to be "far more accountable and upfront with the information they are providing both to my office and the board".

"This isn't a new issue, it's been continuous."

Van Velden said the issues went back to 2024 when she was setting the FENZ levy.

"The information that was provided for consultation on what that levy should be wasn't actually up to date, even by Fire and Emergency.

"We went out and consulted on old information, which when questioned was updated and revised, which is how we went down from a 5.2 percent figure to a 2.2 percent figure, because the modelling was simply out of date based on the forecasts."

Having appointed a new chair to the FENZ board - Raveen Jaduram - the minister hoped the direction from the top down through to the senior leadership team would improve.

"It is a constant battle with Fire and Emergency of illiciting the correct information and going back and forth."

Van Velden was meeting with Jaduram after her scrutiny hearing where she planned to set out her expectations of greater accountability from the top.

Jaduram was appointed after the minister chose not to reappoint Rebecca Keoghan.

"One of the first things I did was reappoint members to the board based on the information the department provided me at the time, which was that they believed the board was working satisfactorily and there was a need for continuity of the board.

"I've now been of the position, having watched that board in action, there was a need for change."

Van Velden told the committee she had intentionally increased the fees for those appointed to the FENZ board in an effort to find the type of people that would provide a "higher level of governance" given the sums of money involved.

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