Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

That's true—I'm misleading the House. That's the most egregious example of this rorts project.

We saw further revelations only last week that, despite the Prime Minister misleading this House that all projects approved were eligible, the ANAO in fact found that 43 per cent of projects, 290 projects in all, were ineligible. Under this corrupt program, the interventions came at the top. We saw 136 emails from the Prime Minister's office. We saw revelations today that, in round 3, where 73 per cent of projects were rejected by Sport Australia, Minister McKenzie wrote to the Prime Minister asking for permission, identifying the projects she intended to approve, on 10 April—colour coded in a spreadsheet by party status. And then after, presumably, the Prime Minister approved the 73 per cent of projects, the backdated brief was received by the department at 8.46 am on 11 April, 17 minutes after the caretaker period began. And again we saw today the Prime Minister misleading the House, saying that the projects were approved on 4 April, when, in fact, the substance of the email to the Prime Minister makes it very clear that the minister hadn't approved the projects when she wrote to the Prime Minister on 10 April.

What's even worse—if you can believe that—is that yesterday the Prime Minister was bragging about the political intervention of his party and his candidates in this process. He openly bragged about the now member for Lindsay—who was merely a candidate at that stage—dictating which projects would go to Lindsay. She identified which projects would be approved. He bragged about it yesterday. We saw in the ANAO report that the Queensland Liberal National Party head office—the secretariat—dictated which projects were going to Longman. Just imagine that for a second: a party headquarters decided how taxpayers' money would be allocated in a seat they were trying to win at the election. Yet again, we've seen this program corrupted, and we've seen the Prime Minister openly bragging about the level of political intervention.

Then we have sports rorts 2, the $150 million for the female facilities stream. It was meant to be regional. It was meant to help regional sporting clubs invest in female changing rooms to increase female participation. What we saw was no guidelines for the program, no applications process, no eligibility criteria and no merits based assessment—only hand-picked projects, and the money being treated as a slush fund by the government. And what was the result? For a program meant to target rural and regional areas, 80 per cent of the money went to building swimming pools—not female changing sheds—in marginal electorates in the cities. Only 10 per cent went to rural and regional areas. And the most egregious example was the $10 million for the North Sydney Olympic Pool—that renowned regional area! They've been creative about trying to defend it, I'll give them that. The mayor of North Sydney claimed it was a regional pool because someone from the country might have once swum there. Just think about that for a minute. We had some jokes today that maybe if they had classified it as a dam, they might have got support.

An honourable member interjecting—

Exactly—what a joke! What's next, the Sydney Harbour Bridge getting funding under the rural bridges program, or the Opera House getting support under a regional arts fund? This is how low this government has stooped. And the people who suffer are the people of Australia, particularly in those sporting clubs who are suffering. Garden Suburb Football Club in my electorate is turning away female soccer teams because the women need to get changed in the canteen or in their cars. These are the people who are suffering because this government presides over corrupted programs. These are programs run for one cause only: to advance their political interest. They are programs designed to misuse taxpayers' money—$250 million, in this case—to advance their political ends, to settle grubby political scores, and to win votes in a desperate bid to hold on to power after they knocked off their second Prime Minister. What a disgrace. And the Australian people are coming for them. The Australian people are sick of them. The Australian people will wreck on this in two years time. (Time expired)

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