ABC News in Australia is reporting that a previously sealed report into the Defence Department’s handling of a A$1.3 billion dollar military contract for the Hawkei vehicle has been fully released. In 2018, Thales Australia 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,” ABC reported. “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.”
Read the full ABC story here.
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