Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

One of the reasons this is important is the lack of transparency within Efic—the fact that it is exempt from FOI and it operates in a very secretive manner. There have been conflicts of interest for Efic board members. Ms Chaplain's appointment was ended abruptly. I believe it is relevant to this bill, because you are asking the parliament to accept an expansion of powers and roles for Efic, despite the fact that currently there is a cloud over the way the organisation runs and how it handles potential conflicts of interest for board members. That's why.

I'm happy to put each of these questions to you, and, if you can answer, that would be great; if you need to take them on notice, that is your right, of course. But, just to be clear, I think these questions are directly related to this issue, because you are asking the parliament to accept an expanded role for this organisation, but what we have here is one example of a woman who has been on the board of Efic who had conflicts of interest, and I'd like to know how Efic managed this conflict of interest from the word go.

If you could take on notice, Minister, when Efic executives first become aware of a potential conflict of interest for Ms Chaplain in the assessment of projects applying for NAIF funds, that would be helpful. I'd also like to know, Minister, what actions were taken by Efic to avoid this conflict, or the perception of it. And I hope that is something that you could provide to us today because, going forward, we need to know that Efic has proper processes in place to deal with potential or perceived conflicts of interest.