Australians were told to accept extraordinary sacrifices during COVID. They are entitled to demand extraordinary scrutiny of those who exercised the power and spent their money. The Sydney Morning Herald’s headline reports that senior bureaucrats accused of a $260 million COVID cover-up now hold top NDIS jobs. Those allegations require a proper answer. They are not findings against the individuals concerned, but their seriousness demands transparent investigation and a clear explanation of how their appointments were assessed. From the start of COVID, we warned about the devastation that the policy response could cause to health, especially public health, and to the economy. We challenged the assurances used to justify decisions carrying enormous consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods. Calling a policy a public health measure does not establish that its benefits outweigh its harms. Calling expenditure an emergency response does not remove the obligation to account for every taxpayer dollar. My concern about the misuse of public money predates COVID. In 2014, I co-authored Chapter 16 of the International Handbook on Whistleblowing Research: “Because They Have Evidence: Globalizing Financial Incentives for Corporate Fraud Whistleblowers”. That chapter examined incentives for insiders to expose fraud against the public purse. Throughout COVID, I returned to the accountability concerns underlying that work when questioning wasteful spending and the protection of those who bring evidence forward. The distinction matters: waste, administrative failure and fraud are different things. Evidence must establish which occurred and who bears responsibility. But “we were in a crisis” cannot become a permanent exemption from scrutiny. The public deserves to know what happened to its money, who knew about the problems, what they did with that knowledge, and whether those entrusted with further public responsibility were properly scrutinised. Public money belongs to the public. Public office carries responsibility. Neither principle expires when the emergency ends. @smh @rowandean @ellymelly smh.com.au/national/victoria…