Governance and reporting

What are gifts, benefits and hospitality?

Gifts are defined as free or heavily discounted items, intangible benefits or hospitality exceeding common courtesy that are offered to employees or Board members or employees in association with their work with the Victorian Asbestos Eradication Agency (VAEA).

Benefits are defined as preferential treatment, privileged access, favours or other advantage offered. They include invitations to sporting, cultural or social events, access to discounts and loyalty programs and promises of a new job. While their value may sometimes be difficult to quantify in dollars, they may be highly valued by the intended recipient and, therefore, used to influence their behaviour.

Hospitality is defined as the friendly reception and treatment of guests, ranging from offers of light refreshment at a business meeting to restaurant meals and sponsored travel and accommodation.

Offers and acceptance or gifts, benefits and hospitality

It is part of normal business practice for people or organisations to exchange tokens of esteem or to provide hospitality or entertainment to business associates.

Victorian Asbestos Eradication Agency (VAEA) employees and Board members must exercise great care in the receiving of offers and accepting of gifts, benefits and hospitality to ensure they do not compromise the integrity of the agency or create the impression of the VAEA’s integrity having been compromised.

It is expected that VAEA Board members and employees will exercise reasonable discretion and prudent judgement in relation to receiving gifts, benefits or hospitality.

In exercising your judgement, VAEA Board members and employees will be guided by the following:

• placing the public interest above their private interests
• not accepting gifts, benefits or hospitality that could raise a reasonable perception of or actual bias or preferential treatment
• not accepting offers from those about whom they are likely to make business decisions
• refusing gifts, benefits or hospitality that are money, items used in a similar way to money, or items easily converted to money.

For further guidance, please read the Victorian Public Sector Commission’s decision tree(opens in a new window) regarding gifts, benefits and hospitality.

It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish a gift, benefit and hospitality, so exercise judgement. Some examples of gifts or favours that have more than a nominal value and are subject to this policy are:

• lunches or dinners at which a specific work or business issue is a minor topic of discussion
  (not all lunches and dinners are a gift or a benefit; for example, a meal in the course of a function for networking with industry peers or a seminar or training session is not a gift or benefit)
• free or discounted tickets to sporting events or other entertainment
• free or discounted products for personal use, for example, wine, merchandise or services
• free or discounted travel and accommodation
• free or discounted use of facilitates such as gyms, conference rooms and car parking.

Recording receipt or offer of a gift, benefit or hospitality

Any VAEA Board member or employee who receives or is offered a gift, benefit or hospitality valued in excess of $50 or from an organisation with whom the VAEA has a commercial or professional engagement shall record the following information in the VAEA Gift, Benefit and Hospitality Register:

• nature of the gift, benefit or hospitality
• name of the individual (and, where relevant, the company or organisation) who offered the gift, benefit or hospitality
• date that the gift, benefit or hospitality was offered or received
• response by the VAEA Board member or employee (that is, was the gift, benefit or hospitality accepted or declined?)
• whether the offer of a gift, benefit or hospitality was a repeat offer.

The VAEA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) will maintain the register which will be tabled at each VAEA Board meeting.

Providing hospitality

It is accepted that there will be times when it is appropriate for the VAEA to provide hospitality to external guests or VAEA employees or Board members.

In all cases, hospitality should be reasonable and balanced and ensure the responsible use of public funds. This means ensuring that hospitality costs are kept to a minimum and that catering or entertainment arrangements are appropriate for the nature of the event.

Providing alcohol

The VAEA CEO will decide whether alcohol will be available at a VAEA function. In making such a decision, the CEO will consider the requirements of the Responsible Service of Alcohol guidelines, the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, Australian Alcohol Guidelines and Victoria's liquor laws.