Bendigo TAFE manager 'misled' superiors: IBAC

A corruption inquiry heard partnership delivery manager Travis Hodgson was present at a meeting with staff of utility infrastructure service provider, Zinfra, in which it was made clear workers at the company were fraudulently enrolled in an engineering course.

The enrolments were allegedly part of a scheme masterminded by training company Taytell and its director, Rebecca Taylor, to siphon of public funds via an arrangement with the TAFE in 2014, which is the focus of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission inquiry.

Mr Hodgson denied he was told the enrolments were fraudulent but accepted an email he sent to his superiors contained falsehoods and accepted he may have been “trying to put a spin on the facts so as to make them appear more favourable for the Kangan Institute”.

“We were unable to send a Kangan staff member to visit the [Zinfra] training, as would be a normal part of our quality plan, as it was late in the year and workloads were quite high,” Mr Hodgson wrote in the email in April 2015, two months after the meeting with Zinfra.

“That’s false and misleading, isn’t it?” counsel assisting the inquiry, Ian Hill QC, asked.

“You didn’t even know, in 2014, of the very existence of [Zinfra], did you? And as a result, as part of your normal quality plan, it would have been impossible to have sent a Kangan staff member to visit the training centre at [Zinfra] because you simply didn’t know about it? Nothing to do with it being late in the year and workloads [being] quite high. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mr Hodgson responded.

Mr Hodgson said he could not “recall the context” of the email, but could not think of any context that would permit him to include false and misleading information.

“I would not be trying to make false information to them,” he said.

“They were aware of the – the project. They were aware of the activity.”

Mr Hodgson acknowledged the two senior managers “must have known there were false misrepresentations” in the email but could not recall if either of them “[took him] to task”.

He refuted Mr Hill’s suggestion he was trying to “rewrite history” with the email.

“I’m not trying to cover something,” he said.

“It’s where do we go from here because that was – I just – we couldn’t get any clear indication of what was going on.”

The Operation Lansdowne inquiry continues.