The first question the public has asked is what will the impact on services be. The little BHS has said in a statement is that services will not be affected while acting Premier James Merlino has commented that he understands the money can be recouped. 

The scammer appears to have appropriated the name of a prominent  Ballarat builder for a allegedly fraudulent invoice. It is a credit to that builders vigilance they were alert to the danger and in turn alerted the hospital financial department.

But the bigger question on many people’s mind is just how did this happen?  

The ubiquitous nature of internet scamming is well known.  Few people have not received offers too good to be true. More brazen fraud has escalated to demands. Consumer Affairs and Victoria Police are constantly issuing warnings about just such risks. Individuals either through inexperience, ignorance or carelessness can be easy prey to the scammer. So the prevalence of risk in an interconnected electronic world demand the payment processes institutions put in place are even more thorough and scrutinised.  

The question most concerning to the taxpaying public is what safeguards a major public institution responsible for such a quantity of public funds had in place and how they were carried out in this instance.  This would seem to go to the heart of the most basic level of public accountability and adequate governance.

Opposition health spokesperson Mary Wooldridge has leapt on the loss and called it a failure of transparency from a government that promised openness.

But she speaks for many in the public who want answers when she says we need to find out what’s happened so that the health services can learn into the future.  The more worrying question that grows from this apparent failure is if such a loss can be incurred by so large an institution what else has been and could be possible? 

The openness of the government with the public in investigating this loss may go someway to restoring the far bigger question of public confidence.