The establishment of the new child sexual abuse-related national services is part of the response to the 2017 final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The timely conduct of the related procurements is intended to establish services that will provide support and advocacy for a cohort of victims of child sexual abuse and also to protect children by intervening before an individual offends.

The audit objective was to assess whether the Attorney-General’s Department’s conduct of the procurements relating to two of the new child sexual abuse-related national services employed open and effective competition and achieved value for money, consistent with the Commonwealth Procurement Rules.

The audit made six recommendations to the department to improve the conduct of procurements. The department agreed to the recommendations.

Key findings

• The new child sexual abuse-related national services are not being provided, with no contracts in place for the delivery of those services.
• The procurements did not involve open and effective competition and the selection of preferred tenderers did not demonstrate the achievement of value for money.
• The conduct of the request for tender processes was not timely, non-compliant tenders were accepted for evaluation and ethical requirements were not met.
• Tender evaluation to select preferred tenderers was not well planned, was not timely and did not demonstrably achieve value for money.