Gifts and benefits register

Our Gifts and Benefits Policy recommends that Commission employees don’t accept any gifts or benefits in their role at the Commission. Quality assessors, complaints officers and decision makers mustn’t accept any gift or benefit in connection with their Commission work. There are only a few situations when an employee is allowed to accept a gift. These are covered in the policy.

Employees must report any gift or benefit they’ve been offered within 10 business days of the offer being made. They need to do this whether they’ve accepted or refused the gift. Employees report any offers through an internal gifts and benefits register. We collect the data from the internal register and report it to the Commission’s Executive. Some of the data is also reported publicly here.

How does it work?

We have an internal register that records all the gifts and benefits (of any value) that staff are offered and that they've declined or accepted. We publicly publish a register of all gifts and benefits our staff receive worth more than $100 (excluding GST). We also publicly publish if staff receive complementary, invitation only airline lounge memberships.

Why we disclose gifts and benefits

We’re committed to being transparent in everything we do. A publicly available gift register makes sure we're accountable and following the Code of Conduct in the Public Service Act 1999 (PS Act).

When offered a gift or benefit, we base whether to accept them on:

impartiality
ethical conduct
accountability
behaving honestly and with integrity
avoiding any conflict of interest
not improperly using senior employees’ status to gain a benefit or an advantage.

Under the Australian Public Service Commission guidelines we need to publicly share this information within 28 days of receiving the gift. We also need to publish our register quarterly.