Shadow Treasurer Rob Lucas said today the CEO of Premier Weatherill’s Department Kym Winter-Dewhirst had been caught out wasting taxpayers’ money on the same full production film company used by Mr.Weatherill to film a travelogue of his overseas trips.
FOI documents reveal that Mr.Winter-Dewhirst paid 57 FILMS $12,000 to film him for a message to his own public service employees in his department. The invoice dated 8/12/2015 shows 57FILMS were paid for a pre production meeting with him, production scheduling, filming, post production editing, post production post and exports and deliverables.
All of this waste just to send an email message to your own staff!
Previous CEOs were quite happy to send emails to their staff at no cost to taxpayers but sadly Mr.Weatherill’s ego trip seems to have rubbed off on Mr.Winter-Dewhirst and he wants a full production film company to produce his emails!
The FOI documents show that this $12k cost was for a ‘pilot version’ so it seems clear Mr.Winter-Dewhirst is intent on wasting even more taxpayers’ money.
Mr.Winter-Dewhirst’s email to staff was seeking to highlight all the good things he’d done and defending himself against the criticism that he was wasting more than $500k on renovations to the 16th floor executive offices.
The FOI documents also reveal that even though more than $250k was spent on 57 FILMS Mr.Weatherill and Mr.Winter-Dewhirst never insisted on any competitive tender process before awarding the lucrative contracts. All the documents reveal the contracts were awarded on a ‘selective’ basis after ‘direct negotiation’ with 57 FILMS.
Mr.Weatherill must explain why there has been no competitive tender and he should also direct Mr.Winter-Dewhirst to stop wasting money by filming emails to his own staff.