Victoria Auditor-General questions transparency of lotto licence deal

Victoria’s Auditor-General, Andrew Greaves, has raised concerns regarding the lack of transparency in a secret 40-year extension of the state’s lotto licence. The deal, involving exclusive bilateral negotiations with The Lottery Corporation, was developed over nearly three years before being announced.

The government secured $1.145 billion from the extension, a move that critics argued was used to bolster the state budget. While the Auditor-General did not identify specific probity concerns, the report noted uncertainty regarding whether a competitive bidding process might have yielded a larger windfall for taxpayers.

Internal analysis suggested that a competitive process was unlikely to outperform bilateral negotiations and that maintaining the current operator would minimize disruptions to tax revenue. Although a commercial adviser valued the licence at approximately $1.372 billion, the Auditor-General cautioned that this was a “theoretical value” and not a direct comparison to the negotiated price.