Providing gifts, benefits and hospitality

An authority providing gifts, benefits and hospitality can create the same integrity risks and consequences as accepting offers, plus additional risks associated with appropriate use of public money. A decision to provide gifts, benefits and hospitality needs to meet the authority’s and overarching legislative obligations on purchasing, along with community expectations.

The authority should use a similar approach to that outlined for the acceptance of gifts, benefits and hospitality, for example understand the risk environment; set expectations; educate, communicate and reinforce expectations to officers; and monitor and review.

Minimum expectations

In setting a policy position on providing gifts, benefits and hospitality, there are some expectations to include.

• Gifts, benefits and hospitality provided, including invitations to events hosted and sponsored, should have a link or obvious benefit to either the authority or government priorities and objectives.
• Spending public money should be proportionate to the benefits obtained for the authority or State, in keeping with community expectations and easy to justify.

Setting expectations

• Make sure the procedure for approval is simple and easy to follow with clear and accessible forms.
• Decide how gifts, benefits and hospitality provided are to be recorded and how these records comply with legislative obligations, for example in the gifts, benefits and hospitality register, in the financial system or both.
• Incorporate decision-making tools into policies and guidance like the HOST test.

Providing alcohol

Providing alcohol as part of hospitality arrangements has integrity and health and safety risks for the authority, and may not meet community expectations.

The decision to provide alcohol should be guided by the authority’s policy position and consideration of the integrity and safety risks it presents.

If providing alcohol, it should be incidental to the reason for providing hospitality and modest in relation to the overall spend on hospitality.