Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to add some comments.

Leave granted.

I briefly want to talk about one of the audits contained in this report, and that is the Safer Streets program, which was a $50 million election commitment from the coalition—and I understand that. But, unfortunately, it did contain some outrageous cases of pork barrelling, and to fund the program they took funding off some excellent projects that would have made Australian towns and suburbs safer, such as Sunshine in Melbourne. This program was particularly concerning because of the poor administration by the Attorney-General's Department. The ANAO found that 60 per cent of applications did not meet the eligibility requirements yet were still funded, 28 projects did not provide a quote yet were rated as satisfactory for financial information, and one project received funding for CCTVs that were installed 11 months before the project funding agreement was executed. The ANAO also found that the department did not manage its conflicts of interest at all well. These were concerns that were echoed during the committee's hearings, and I hope that the department lifts its game in this area.

Of the 81 projects that received funding, 78 per cent were in coalition seats and another nine per cent were in multiple electorates, which included coalition seats. So, 87 per cent of the funding of the projects went to coalition seats. The funding round was supposed to be restricted to only election commitments, yet seven projects where no announcements were made before the election received funding, including one in the electorate of the member for Petrie, where the only evidence was that the member for Petrie spoke to the minister in May 2014 and somehow received funding. Equally concerning was the fact that six projects were removed, of which four were subject to clear election commitments before the last election, and those four were all in Labor-held seats.

I do not dispute the ability of parties to make election funding commitments and for governments to commit and deliver that funding. The key issue is how you quarantine that funding from other funding streams so that you can deliver that election commitment without bringing additional projects in or excluding projects that were committed to. That is why there is a very important recommendation in that chapter about how the Commonwealth grant guidelines deal with this very complex issue that both sides of politics will face in the future.

I will finish by thanking the committee chair, the member for Groom, and the rest of the committee for dealing with these matters which are partisan in nature in a very constructive way of trying to take the heat out of it and ask how we can improve public administration of grants that were made in an election context. I also thank the secretariat for their always-excellent work. Thank you.

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