The government’s AusTender website often throws up intriguing morsels.
Take the Federal Court, for instance, aka Yarraside’s Lubyanka.
A series of contract notices have been published three days after the court’s senior bureaucrats appeared on February 9 before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Nine contract notices emerged with a total value of $3.5 million – well after the permissible notice period set out in the Commonwealth’s Procurement Rules.
Included are some temporary hire contracts, including one which was executed four months after it commenced – which does seem a little bit weird.
Weirder still is an FCA contract for legal advice to be provided by Workdynamic Australia, trading name of Omedia Pty Ltd.
This privateer outfit does specialised workplace-related investigations and provides legal advice to government agencies and the big end of town. The value of the contract is given at $30,000.
What is unusual is that the Federal Court didn’t go to a firm on the Legal Services Panel or to the AGS. Only in exceptional circumstances can a non-corporate government entity go beyond “coordinated arrangements” – in which case “special need” has to be demonstrated and permission granted jointly by the relevant minister (AG) and the Minister for Finance. (See Commonwealth Procurement Rules 4.12.)
However, in this instance, the contract was slipped in via the court’s “listed entity” (ABN 49 110 847 399) to which the usual procedure does not apply.
The details of the “limited tender” contract have been kept confidential on the ground of legal privilege.
With all the closed shop rigamarole, intuition suggests something is afoot. We asked the court’s obliging media liaison maestro what was up, and have been told “the matter concerns a junior employee and is confidential and subject to legal professional privilege”.
There are plenty of possibilities lurking within that response, none of which explain why a law firm on the legal services panel could not do the job.
The mystery continues.
Meanwhile, there is a continuing drama surrounding the misuse of court transcripts by unauthorised and unapproved subcontractors.
Transcription of court proceedings is contracted to VIQ Solutions, a Canadian company with HQ in Mississauga, Ontario, and operations in Australia.
The ABC reported on February 17, 2026, that unbeknown to the shineys in the court hierarchies and contrary to the contract, slabs of the transcribing have been hived off to an Indian company, e24 Technologies, based in Chennai.
Thousands of Federal Court documents were floating around Indian email addresses with abandon.
Local VIQ staff complained that e24 was completing transcripts at speeds that were not humanly possible, complete with significant errors – suggesting that AI was the modus operandi.
Local VIQ staff raised the use of offshore transcribers with management as far back as August 2025.
Immediately, the concern was the potential misuse of sensitive and confidential information arising in national security, AFP, taxation, Border Force, bankruptcy, migration, and corporate proceedings before the court.
However, the Federal Court only sent a formal please explain to VIQ in the week before court boffins were hauled in before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on February 9.
Senator David Shoebridge (Greens NSW) was on hand to probe the Chief Registrar Sia Lagos, with a bucket of ripe tomatoes conveniently at hand.
Why hasn’t there been an independent audit of what’s happening to the private data of individuals using the court – for which there are even more catastrophic consequences where privileged or sensitive information was revealed in closed court?
Sia seemed at a loss to explain why there was at least a five-month hiatus between the problem emerging and a letter being sent to the contractor.
Sen Shoebridge was quick to point out that court transcription services should never have been privatised and outsourced in the first place.
You can see the chilling interaction between the senator and Sia along with her offsider Jimmy Mastorakos here – from the 1:58:03 mark.