The new logo for Centrelink. Source: Supplied
IT'S the new Centrelink rainbow logo that cost taxpayers $4.6 million but nobody wants to own up to being the Mr Squiggle who signed off on the expenditure.
Despite ongoing complaints that Centrelink's call centres are understaffed, the Department of Human Services found millions of dollars for the logo update.
Announced by Centrelink on the social media site Twitter in February 2012, with a post stating: "We've got a new logo!'' the squiggle came with an eye-watering price tag.
First, departmental officials commissioned a $30,000 study into a new logo in 2010, when the Rudd-Gillard government merged Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support into one department, during the period former treasurer Chris Bowen was the responsible minister.
But the big cost arrived in 2011 and 2012 when the Department of Human Services decided to take down the Centrelink signs featuring two outstretched hands and replace them with the new rainbow squiggle. The Sunday Telegraph contacted former human services ministers Chris Bowen, Tanya Plibersek, Brendan O'Connor and Kim Carr to discover if one of them had signed off on the squiggle, but drew a blank.
The department even raised the prospect that the $4.6 million expenditure was not signed off by any minister at all, stating that "the changes to signage and minimal logo changes were handled as part of the normal administrative practices of the department''.
