A scathing report into the Defence Department's handling of a $1.3 billion dollar military contract has been fully released, nearly three years after the ABC exposed a high-powered legal effort to keep some details secret. In 2018, the ABC revealed Thales Australia had applied for a Federal Court injunction against the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) over a critical assessment of its Hawkei project to supply new armoured vehicles to the Army.
The French multinational arms company also convinced Attorney-General Christian Porter to use extraordinary powers to black out six sensitive paragraphs from the ANAO's investigation into the light protected vehicle acquisition before it was published.
Thales was concerned about Auditor-General Grant Hehir's finding that the Commonwealth could have saved hundreds of millions of dollars if it had instead stayed with the United States joint light tactical vehicle (JLTV) program....MORE
