About Reckoner

Making Fraud, Waste & Abuse
impossible to ignore.

$23.6B
identified in government waste
18
published findings
100%
sourced to official records

Reckoner exists to make Fraud, Waste & Abuse in Australian government spending impossible to ignore. We pull every public contract from AusTender, every audit finding from the ANAO, and run them through AI that quantifies the damage in dollars — then names who was responsible. Every claim is linked to the original document. Nothing is speculation.

Every finding is written in two layers. The first is plain English — the kind your mum can read, be angry about, and share with one tap. The second layer is the forensic detail: contract numbers, ABNs, dates, percentage blowouts, ANAO report references. The first layer makes it go viral. The second layer makes it undeniable — and signals to anyone responsible that we have the receipts.

Virality is the product. Government waste hides in complexity — thousand-page budget papers, obscure procurement categories, agency jargon designed to make your eyes glaze over. We strip that away, put the dollar figure in the headline, name the minister who was on watch, and make it one click to share. When enough Australians see these numbers, ignoring them becomes political suicide. That's the point.

Pillar 01

Impossible to ignore

Dollar figures in every headline. Plain language every Australian can understand. Named politicians. Built to be shared.

Pillar 02

Forensic receipts

Every finding includes contract numbers, ABNs, dates, and source links. Journalists can cite it. Politicians can't deny it.

Pillar 03

Apolitical but personal

Waste is waste regardless of who's in government. But accountability is personal — the minister on watch is named, every time.

Pillar 04

Virality is accountability

Every page, finding, report, and tweet is optimised to be shared. The more Australians who see this, the harder it is to ignore.

Data sources: AusTender (federal contracts), ANAO audit reports, federal budget papers. All data is publicly available. Every claim links to the original document.

See all findings Fund the engine

The Full Reckoning

3 active investigations. 15 completed. 0 in the queue.

Rank Finding Amount Status
1 $7.8 billion of your taxes paid to consultants who left nothing behind $7.8B Active
2 $3.3 billion in dodgy NDIS claims slipped through because nobody was watching $3.3B Active
3 CIMIC Donated $540K to Labor, Liberal and Nationals — Collected $3.1B in Government Construction, 41% Without Open Tender $3.1B Active
4 Thales Australia Donated $195K to Labor and Liberal — Landed $2.2B in Defence Contracts Through Restricted Tender $2.2B Investigated
5 $2.1 billion in government contracts handed out without competition — no bids, no questions $2.1B Investigated
6 Defence blew $1.8 billion over budget on IT projects — and they still don't work properly $1.8B Investigated
7 Ministers overruled their own experts to hand $1.2 billion to whoever they wanted $1.2B Investigated
8 The aged care regulator spent $890 million and can't show it made a single nursing home safer $890.0M Investigated
9 PwC Donated $270K to Labor and Liberal — Then Bagged $700M in Advisory Contracts, Including Confidential Tax Reform Work $697.4M Investigated
10 $719M in community grants flowed to coalition marginal seats at more than double the rate of safe seats $290.0M Investigated
11 Three major charities quietly took 57% of a $402M fund meant for small Indigenous community organisations $80.6M Investigated
12 Services Australia's IT modernisation with Accenture blew $75 million over budget $75.5M Investigated
13 The Australian National University got $175M from a research grants program that chose recipients without competitive bids $29.8M Investigated
14 Home Affairs' IT contractor bill blew up 135% — $18 million became $42 million, no rebid $24.3M Investigated
15 PricewaterhouseCoopers charged Defence $54 million for HR consulting — $22 million more than agreed, no rebid $22.2M Investigated
16 The Bureau of Meteorology's AWS migration cost $22 million more than planned — and nobody shopped around $22.0M Investigated
17 Deloitte built a public service analytics tool for $12.7 million — three times the budget, zero competition $7.9M Investigated
18 Ernst & Young charged double to evaluate an Indigenous health program — hired directly, no competition $4.7M Investigated
$23.6B total waste identified — and counting $23.6B