Western Australia's auditor general has highlighted concerns over the state government's $580 million spending during the pandemic, with millions of rapid antigen tests remaining unused.
Western Australia's auditor general has highlighted concerns over the state government's $580 million spending during the pandemic, with millions of rapid antigen tests remaining unused.
The Financial Audit Results State Government 2021-22 (Part 2: COVID-19 Impacts) report tabled in Parliament today covered action taken by the public sector for the financial year ending June 2022.
Auditor General Caroline Spencer said the status of some of the actions have changed but the impact continued in the public sector and community.
Ms Spencer said the report presented more detail about the increase in health spending during the 2022 financial year and the management of rapid antigen tests.
The report found there were 68 million rapid antigen tests due to expire within the next 12 months from June 2022.
All stock was expected to be distributed but 2.7 million tests had expired by the end of March after the expected COVID-19 waves did not occur and community use of the RATs had not been as expected, the report said.
“This does not account for the number of tests close to expiring that are held by private and non-government organisations or the general public in their homes and which may never be used,” it said.
According to the report, the original brief was to spend $3 million on RATs for health workers and returning travellers, but the spending escalated to $440 million by June 2022, which would be about twice the cost of the Bunbury Hospital redevelopment.
The report said the Department of Health and the Department of Finance did not collaborate on the procurement of RATs and conducted their own processes, with the state government spending $580 million in total.
Ms Spencer said public entities had spent about 10 per cent of the state's 2022 operating surplus on diagnostic plastics without showing evidence of considered and coordinated planning or ongoing advice for the need of the expenditure.
“I acknowledge the uncertainty that the pandemic created, and that many public servants, particularly in Health Support Services, worked extremely hard over an extended period to implement directives," she said.
“However, I have never before witnessed such escalation in the cost of a program over such a short timeframe, occurring with a lack of due consideration of the impacts, or without a record of anyone pausing to ask what level of procurement was sufficient and whether this had been achieved.”
Ms Spencer said continued impacts from actions taken to combat the pandemic include fatigue and diversion from other public administration practices.
“Through our audits, my office has found such diversion resulted in weaker financial management and information system controls in a record number of public entities in recent years,” she said.
“This increases the risk of error, fraud, data breaches and disruption in public services to the community.”
The Office of the Auditor General recommended that WA Health must decide to destroy or use the remaining stock of RATs, including the expired tests.
Other recommendations include performing regular stocktakes, conducting risk assessments, and applying a more proportionate risk-based and consequential approach to business activities, particularly for emergency responses.
Opposition spokesman for regional health Martin Aldridge said the state government bought too many tests at a great public cost.
"To put it in context, the $578.9 million investment in RATs amounts to the equivalent of redeveloping the Geraldton Health Campus five times over," he said.
Mr Aldridge said the lack of collaboration between the departments to procure the RATs was a damning find.
"The purchase of 110 million testing kits, enough to give every man, woman and child in WA over 40 kits each, was clearly overkill, and the auditor general has confirmed this," he said.