The Tax Office ordered Hudson's financier to send it 20 cents from every dollar Hudson drew. Three weeks later, Hudson was in administration.

Hudson Global Resources (Aust) Pty Ltd, ACN 002 888 762, was not a small recruitment company running out of cash at the edge of the economy. Across the Commonwealth procurement record we identify 6,413 Hudson contracts since 2005, worth about A$974 million in total stated value. 201 of them carried contracted end dates running past 15 September 2026, the day creditors resolved to wind the company up, and those carry about A$98 million between them, including work for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Services Australia and Defence.

Then, on 30 March 2026, the Tax Office did something that exposes how the business was actually being funded.

Hudson did not always wait for its customers to pay. When it issued an invoice, Scottish Pacific Business Finance, ScotPac, could lend it up to 85 per cent of the money early, and was repaid from the receivable. That is invoice finance.

Then the ATO stepped between Hudson and its financier. It served ScotPac with a notice requiring the financier to send the Tax Office 20 per cent of each Hudson drawdown, until as much as approximately A$19.64 million had been recovered.

Put more simply: every time Hudson drew another dollar on the facility, 20 cents went to the ATO before Hudson could use it.

Three weeks later, on 22 April, Hudson appointed voluntary administrators.

And there is a second fact that makes the financing story worth understanding. Hudson's final Payment Times period shows that immediately before administration it was paying small-business suppliers faster, not slower. Median payment time 17 days. More than 93 per cent of small-business invoices paid within 30 days. None took more than 60.

Hudson nevertheless entered administration with approximately A$40 million owed elsewhere.

That is the contradiction at the centre of this case. A debtor can be paying you perfectly well while serious problems are building somewhere your own ledger does not show.

For a labour-hire business that mattered, because workers needed paying before customers necessarily settled their invoices. By 22 April, when Glenn Livingstone, Benjamin Ho and Nicholas Charlwood of WLP Restructuring were appointed, Hudson reportedly had about A$950,000 in cash and a national labour-hire operation to fund.

The administrators wanted ScotPac to keep advancing money, but ScotPac was still bound by the notice. WLP went urgently to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, telling creditors on 7 May that relief was needed so Hudson could keep drawing while they tried to preserve the business for a restructure.

The Court intervened. It modified the normal operation of the administration regime so the ATO notice would not continue stripping part of the new financing required to keep Hudson trading. The administrators had argued that allowing the diversion to continue threatened their ability to meet wages, taxes and other operating costs.

That is the first thing the 16 September notice does not tell you. A business appearing across thousands of Commonwealth contract records, including 201 with contracted end dates beyond the eventual liquidation resolution, entered administration while fighting to preserve access to the facility keeping its cash moving.

Hudson's final Payment Times report covers 1 July to 31 December 2025:

The improvement was substantial. Hudson's 95th-percentile payment time had been 120 days in each of the two previous periods. By the final half of 2025 it was 34.

There is an important qualification. A creditor could not have used that report as a warning before Hudson entered administration. Hudson did not submit it until 30 June 2026, more than two months after administrators were appointed.

So this is not a story about the Payment Times Register falsely telling creditors Hudson was healthy. It is a retrospective look at who Hudson was still paying. Immediately before administration, small-business suppliers were generally being paid quickly. Elsewhere, enormous liabilities were accumulating.

The Victorian Labour Hire Authority later reconstructed Hudson's position from the administrators' material, recording approximately A$40 million in creditor debt. About A$24 million was owed to the ATO, primarily PAYG withholding that had not been remitted. By May, approximately A$7 million in superannuation was outstanding to around 1,600 workers.

Hudson could pay an ordinary trade invoice in 17 days while falling millions behind somewhere else.

If you supplied Hudson and your invoices were being paid, your own debtor ledger might have looked excellent. It would not show you the unpaid tax, the unpaid super, or how dependent the business had become on converting unpaid invoices into immediate cash.

According to the Victorian Labour Hire Authority's decision, Hudson's administrators identified several transactions they considered likely to represent breaches of directors' duties. Two were large.

An A$4 million receivable owed to Hudson by a related company had been forgiven following the sale of that entity. A second A$7.1 million receivable, owed by ultimate holding company Apache Group Holdings Pty Ltd, had also been forgiven. Together, A$11.1 million.

The administrators later estimated potential claims arising from matters they identified could exceed A$6 million.

Those are the administrators' views as recorded by the regulator. They are not court findings that Hudson's directors breached their duties. But the distinction matters now, because Hudson is no longer merely in administration. A liquidator can continue investigating whether recoveries are available for creditors.

Liquidation was not the first outcome. A revised deed of company arrangement passed on 24 June on the administrators' casting vote, with the ATO voting against it.

The invoice-finance problem had not disappeared. One condition required the deed proponents to be satisfied the ATO would have no continuing claim against money later advanced by a debt financier. Another A$500,000 contribution depended on Victoria not cancelling Hudson's labour-hire licence by 1 August.

Two days after the vote, that assumption broke. Victoria announced the cancellation on 26 June, effective 10 July, citing the administration alongside tax and worker liabilities, historical losses, financial-reporting failures and the related-party transactions.

Then on 21 July, ASIC said Hudson had been convicted and fined A$270,000 over unlodged audited financial reports for 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Again, the information was sitting somewhere else. Payment behaviour was one dataset. Financial reporting was another. Tax exposure was another. Labour-hire licensing was another. The insolvency notice was another. None described the whole company by itself.

Hudson still had valuable operating assets.

HiTech Group Australia agreed to acquire selected Hudson assets rather than the company itself. The transaction covered customer contracts, activated contractors and their agreements, employees, work in progress and supporting infrastructure. It completed on 11 September. Four days later, creditors resolved to wind up Hudson Global Resources (Aust) Pty Ltd, and ASIC published the notice on the 16th.

So "Hudson went into liquidation" does not mean the recruitment operation stopped on 15 September. Selected operating assets had already been sold. What remained was the old legal company carrying the historical creditor position and the unresolved claims.

Hudson happens to sell recruitment and labour. The credit lesson is broader: suppliers everywhere make decisions partly from one deceptively simple fact: whether the customer is paying them.

Hudson shows why that is not enough. A company can pay 93 per cent of small-business invoices within 30 days and still enter administration owing about A$40 million, including A$24 million to the Tax Office.

That does not mean the payment data was wrong. It means the payment data was answering a narrower question than a creditor needed answered.

30 March 2026. The ATO serves ScotPac with the notice requiring 20 per cent of Hudson's drawdowns, toward a claim of up to approximately A$19.64 million.

22 April. Hudson enters voluntary administration.

7 May. WLP tells creditors it has sought urgent court relief concerning ScotPac funding and the ATO notice.

24 June. A revised deed of company arrangement is approved on the administrators' casting vote. The ATO votes against it.

26 June. The Victorian Labour Hire Authority announces cancellation of Hudson's licence, effective 10 July.

30 June. Hudson submits its final Payment Times report, covering July to December 2025.

21 July. Hudson is convicted and fined A$270,000 over three years of unlodged audited financial reports.

11 September. HiTech completes its acquisition of selected Hudson operating assets.

15 September. Creditors resolve that Hudson be wound up.

16 September. ASIC publishes the liquidation notice.

ASIC published 129 notices covering 123 entities on 16 September:

A winding-up application asks a court for an order; it does not mean a company has been wound up. A members' voluntary liquidation is ordinarily solvent. 60 deadlines fall out of the day: 21 proofs of debt, 19 proof and proxy, 16 hearings and 4 proposal periods.

ACN 652 453 560 Pty Ltd entered creditors' voluntary liquidation holding the registered business name Compound Fitness Equipment. Its legal name was Compound Fitness Equipment Proprietary Limited until August. DBE Real Estate Pty Ltd entered restructuring holding First National Engage Eastlakes, and Morley Body Corporates Pty Ltd entered administration holding Morley Strata Management Services. Network RV, Fair Dinkum Caravans and Network Engineering all moved from administration into liquidation on the same day.

These are applications published on 16 September. An application asks a court for an order. It is not a finding of insolvency, and it can be paid out, settled, adjourned or dismissed.

The pattern is unusual: the Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer brought 6 of the 16, the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation only two.

The remaining 12 are in the full 16 September register, with the applicant, court and hearing for each.

ASIC published notices dated 16 September 2026 provide the liquidation, the liquidators and the day's other appointments. Company registration, former names and registered business names are from the ASIC company register and the Australian Business Register. The Commonwealth contract figures are our own reconstruction of the AusTender record, taking one record per contract identifier at its latest stated value, so they count contracts rather than every published contract notice. The A$974 million spans 2005 to 2026, making it a twenty-one-year cumulative total rather than current exposure, and AusTender records a contract's contracted end date rather than whether the work was still running, so a date beyond 15 September does not establish that the contract was live. The payment figures are Hudson's own reports to the Payment Times Reports Register. The administration chronology, the financing and tax material, the regulator's decision and the acquisition terms are drawn from the administrators' creditor circulars, the Victorian regulator's published decision, the court record and the acquirer's own disclosures.

The counts above are of the notices ASIC published on 16 September, captured complete: 129 of 129 detail pages. They describe what was published that day, not what occurred on it.

External administration is a matter of public record. Nothing in this article alleges wrongdoing by any company, director, shareholder, lender, customer or other person named. The administrators' views recorded by the Victorian Labour Hire Authority are their views, not findings of a court.