Sydney Local Health District received $52.083 Million in 19-20 financial year from the COVID19 Stimulus Budget to run hotel quarantine -Quarantine fee looks like double dipping, unless it is really a Dominello-Hazard penalty
by Ganesh Sahathevan
The following excerpt is from the Sydney Local Health District 2019-2020 Annual Report:
Special Hotel Accomodation is better known as NSW hotel quarantine. The Berejiklian Government commenced hotel quarantine on 29 March 2020; the financial year end is 30 June. In July 2020, the government started charging those it ordered into quarantine a fee.
It is not clear whether SLHD received additional SHA funding in the 20-21 financial year; financial statements for the period have not yet been published. However, the imposition of quarantine fees by the NSW Government, which are invoiced by the SLHD for the provision of health services, does look like a case of double dipping, given the quantum of the stimulus budget payment.
Readers will recall that NSW Minister for Finance Damien Tudehope considers the fee partial recovery of costs. However, management of that fee by Revenue NSW and the manner in which collection is being enforced gives the impression that the fee is in fact a penalty.
TO BE READ WITH
Collection of Damnien Tudehope's non-health service expenses via Sydney Local Health District likely to have required another Dom Perrotet style Transport Asset Holding Entity shell
by Ganesh Sahathevan
Premier Dominic Perrotet, the former Treasurer
As previously reported on this blog:
On 21 February 2021 the SMH quoting NSW Minister For Finance and Small Business Damien Tudehope reported; NSW Finance Minister Damien Tudehope said your invoice for hotel quarantine includes a contribution towards security, testing, cleaning, police, health personnel and other expenses.
It has also been reported here that Tudehope is relying on the Health Services Act (HSA) to recover costs that fall outside the Act.
Invoices for the costs associated with the quarantine program are issued by the Sydney Local Health District.That creates accounting problems at the SLHD, and NSW Health (see story below).
The revelation that the HSA is being relied on to charge and recover the costs of quarantine compounds those problems for SLHD and NSW Health would have issued invoices for costs incurred by other NSW government departments, for instance NSW Police and NSW Department of Justice.
Therefore it is not unlikely that former Treasurer and now Premier Dominic Perottet would have utilised a shell company like his Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE) to house quarantine expenses while the accounting, and legal issues described above are resolved.
If so then as with the TAHE those costs might well be hidden and not reflected in NSW budgets.
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Is there a NSW Health Quarantine Fee Entity to rival Perrotet's Transport Asset Holding Entity - Did Treasurer (now Premier) Perrotet create another shell company to house NSW Quarantine costs?
by Ganesh Sahathevan
The SMH revealed in June 2021:
The NSW government has attempted to cover up how it artificially inflated the state’s budgets by tens of billions of dollars after it shifted the rail network’s costs onto a corporation that still hasn’t been able to properly operate six years after it was launched
The corporation, known as the Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE), was part of a plan hatched in 2014 to set up a shell corporation to shift billions of dollars of expenses off the state budget and into a new rail body.
NSW Treasury was able to use the corporation, with the approval of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to inflate the budget to help mask the government slipping into deficit in 2018.
Premier Dominic Perrotet was Treasurer from 2017 to 2021; he succeeded Gladys Berejiklian, who was Transport Minister from 2011 to 2015, and then Treasurer, before she became Premier, until two weeks ago when she was succeeded by Perrotet.
The accounting of NSW Quarantine Fees seems so murky that the question has to be asked: Is there a NSW Health Quarantine Fee Entity to rival Perrotet's Transport Asset Holding Entity and did Treasurer (now Premier) Perrotet create another shell company to house NSW Quarantine costs?
TO BE READ WITH
by Ganesh Sahathevan
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