Dr Kennedy said he was broadly aware at the time the Leppington Triangle was the last piece of land needed in the airport envelope and the process to buy it had been going on for some time."I was aware of the matter in broad terms, I wasn't across it in detail," he told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday.He said the fact information had been withheld from decision makers meant "even when your systems are doing a good job" it was hard to discover potential problems.
Dr Kennedy signed off Infrastructure's financial statements for 2018-19 as one of his final acts before leaving for Treasury in September 2019.But on Monday he said it was "a matter of fact they are inaccurate" because of the issues raised in the audit report about the land valuation. "It's a reasonable question of why did I sign the financial statements off when that matter had not … been settled," he said.
"I felt it was an unreasonable thing to leave a new secretary to have to sign off on the financial statements of the year that I just oversaw the department for, so I chose to sign them off. I didn't appreciate the significance of this matter." Labor's finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher asked: "You don't think there was any way for you to have known that that information was inaccurate when you signed it off?"He said the ANAO report's revelations reflected poorly in the large number of public servants who had worked on Western Sydney issues and it was important to get to the bottom of what had happened.The most important news, analysis and insights delivered to your inbox at the start and end of each day.
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