To be fair..
>nine Department of Health officials handling the project didn't disclose that they held Telstra shares<
That is a lot like saying that "9 officials didn't disclose they ate food" on some food related contract.
People who own Telstra shares are mostly / disproportionally people who don't know anything about shares, have no other shares, have no interest in shares, and don't know anything about the company results.
Also, Telstra is a big company, and this is a tiny unimportant part of the company with no effect on the share price.
You could argue that these people have a political bias towards Telstra, and against private charities, but in that case "owns Telstra shares" is redundant: you've already said that they are public servents, and the rest follows from that.