В Австралии признали: главной причиной провалов в госзакупках является не отсутствие правил, а нехватка профессиональной культуры честности

If you were to ask most public sector procurement professionals what probity means, you will hear a consistent answer: declare conflicts of interest, keep tender documents secure, follow the evaluation criteria, document your decisions, writes Paul Vorbach. Of course, these responses are not wrong, but they describe the minimum, not the capability. The gap between probity as compliance and probity as confidence is where many of the most significant procurement failures in recent years have occurred. The past two years have produced a series of instructive examples. In 2024, an audit of the $550 million Australian War Memorial redevelopment found that multiple contracts were awarded without ministerial oversight, prior relationships were not disclosed, and contract splitting was used to bypass approval thresholds. The same year, approximately 75 per cent of Tourism Australia’s procurement budget was directed to third-party contractors without competitive tendering, in direct contravention of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules. Neither of these failures was the result of officials who did not know that probity rules existed. They were the result of organisations where probity had become a peripheral consideration, something managed by legal and audit functions rather than embedded in the day-to-day judgement of the people making procurement decisions – that is the distinction that matters. These Commonwealth examples are not isolated. The same pattern recurs across state and territory governments, where integrity commissions regularly expose procurement failures of exactly this kind: probity treated as a process to navigate rather than a judgement to exercise. The revised Commonwealth Procurement Rules, which took effect in November 2025, reinforce this point explicitly. The updated rules also extend ethical obligations further into supplier assessment. Officials must now consider a supplier’s historic performance and ethical conduct as part of value-for-money analysis and must make reasonable enquiries to verify compliance with labour regulations and environmental requirements. When probity is embedded as a capability, it changes what procurement professionals can do. The organisations that handle procurement probity well share a common characteristic: they have conscientiously made it a practitioner skill rather than a governance event. Probity in these settings is not something that happens when an adviser is engaged or a register is signed. It is the lens through which procurement professionals assess situations as they arise. The Australian National Audit Office reinforced this, noting that internal probity guidelines need to be actively followed, documented and applied to decision-making as procurements progress. When probity is embedded as a capability rather than treated as a compliance exercise, it changes what procurement professionals can do. This is the confidence dividend: the ability to apply judgement rather than consult a checklist. It does not eliminate the need for documentation, advisers, or formal processes. It makes those tools more effective because the people using them understand what they are for. Organisations that are serious about this shift are increasingly building probity literacy into their broader procurement capability frameworks – alongside commercial skills, stakeholder management, and contract administration. The War Memorial audit did not reveal a shortage of probity rules in the Australian public sector. They revealed a shortage of embedded probity capability. That is a more demanding problem to address, but also a more tractable one, because capability can be deliberately built in ways that rules alone cannot achieve. Paul Vorbach is founding managing director at AcademyGlobal This article first appeared in the August issue of GN EXTRA – read it here.