If you accept gifts from a person or organisation, you may give the impression you’ll favour them with board decisions.
To help you, we’ve listed your minimum accountabilities.
Your board may wish to adopt stricter guidelines or may need to meet additional requirements imposed by your portfolio department.
You must not seek gifts, benefits and hospitality for yourself or others.
You must refuse all offers of gifts, benefits and hospitality that:
You must also:
Token offers are of little value to you and the person making the offer.
Token offers cannot be worth more than $50.
You can accept them if they don’t create a conflict of interest or reputational damage. Examples of token gifts are:
Non-token offers include anything worth more than $50.
Examples of non-token offers include:
You can only accept non-token offers if they help your organisation, the public sector or the Victorian government achieve its goals.
You can offer gifts, benefits and hospitality:
If you want to offer gifts, benefits or hospitality, you must follow the Code of Conduct for Directors of Victorian Public Entities.
This means your gifts, benefits or hospitality must:
For all non-token gifts, benefits and hospitality, you must:
Use your organisation’s form or process to do this.
If you breach your minimum accountabilities, you could face criminal charges or disciplinary action.
If you see corrupt conduct, report this to your board’s chair.
You can also make a public interest disclosure to the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC).
As a board director, we recommend you read the Gifts, Benefits and Hospitality Policy Guide.