Tourism Australia has refused to say how much taxpayer money was spent keeping its most well-paid executive in free accommodation in an affluent Sydney suburb as he rode out the first nine months of the coronavirus pandemic before returning to his post in China.
Crikey can reveal Tourism Australia’s China-based executive general manager for eastern markets and aviation, Andrew Hogg, spent most of 2020 in Australia while continuing to receive the generous benefits associated with his posting in Shanghai.
Tourism Australia ignored many of the questions Crikey sent while reporting this story, including how much it cost to fly Hogg’s family back and forth to China on several occasions. However, the agency may be more forthcoming when it faces a grilling later tonight at Senate estimates.
Potential queries might also include the firing of three employees who blew $137,441 of taxpayer money on holiday trips, an incident Crikey revealed in April.
Hogg is by far the most highly paid employee at the agency. With all benefits, allowances, superannuation and his base salary included, he earned $819,983 in the most recent financial year. By comparison, Hogg’s boss, Tourism Australia managing director Phillipa Harrison, earned a total of $536,792.
(Source: Tourism Australia Annual Report 2022-23)
The only specific figure Tourism Australia offered in response to Crikey’s questions was $57,329: the cost of relocating Hogg when he left China earlier this year to settle back in Australia.
Annual reports show Hogg received a total of $453,374 in benefits and allowances during the two financial years from 2019 to 2021. No other executives were listed in annual reports as receiving any such benefits.
Tourism Australia confirmed Hogg spent nine of those months in Australia, from January 2020 to September, after he became stuck in Australia in following a family trip to Perth.
“Mr Hogg’s total ‘other benefits and allowances’ are included in annual reports, in line with reporting requirements, and include accommodation expenses in Australia during the pandemic, when he was unable to return to China,” a Tourism Australia spokesperson told Crikey.
The agency said all benefits and allowances were paid out in accordance with Hogg’s existing contractual arrangements, and Crikey is not suggesting any wrongdoing.
According to sources who worked at Tourism Australia at the time, Hogg lived with his family in a house in the affluent Sydney suburb of Manly while China’s borders were shut (the country shut its borders to foreigners from March 28 to September 28, 2020). According to a real estate website, the average house rent in Manly in 2020 was $1,500 per week.
One source said that while Hogg is well liked by many colleagues, the free S