Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate of Parramatta does not have a swimming pool. We had one, but the state government ripped it out of the ground to build something else. Years later, we've just been through the hottest summer on record without a pool. We're 60 per cent born overseas. Many of the people in my electorate, including the children, were raised in places where swimming lessons were not an option. There are adults who can't swim and teenagers who can't swim, and we have lost our pool. They applied under what is known as the 'community sports program', better known as the 'sports rorts program', and they got 83 out of 100 when assessed by the department. They were No. 16 on the list, and were they funded? No, because this government has rorted the process. The corruption of the process is appalling. If you look at the figures, 73 per cent of the projects that were funded were not on the list that came from the department. Forty-three per cent of them weren't even eligible, yet my electorate and its swimming pool—No. 16—are not even there. It's gone. There is no funding for a community in extraordinary need.

The Prime Minister has stood up in this place and said, 'Ah, but it was within the rules.' Now, let's leave aside that it wasn't within the rules. The National Audit Office clearly says it wasn't. Anyone with half a brain can see that it wasn't in the rules. But let's assume for a minute that it was. When you get to be the Prime Minister and you're the prime rule-maker, you do not get to use the rules as a shield. If what you want to do is unethical, if it's not the best use of taxpayers' money and it's in the rules, then you change the rules because that's your job. Your job as the Prime Minister is to make sure that taxpayers' money is well spent. If what this government did is within the rules, then you should be slammed for not changing them, quite frankly. This is not okay.

This is not the only place in which the Parramatta pool was ignored. It's not the only one. There was another fund which has come to light now, which is the $150 million female facilities and water safety stream program. Again, many organisations in my electorate don't have female change rooms for their state top 10 rugby teams or cricket teams at all. Let's leave that aside. We also don't have a swimming pool, and yet the guidelines for this program weren't even released. However, $60 million, or 40 per cent of the program's funding, was spent in two Liberal-held seats and 80 per cent of it—even though it was a regional program—was spent in city electorates on swimming pools but not in Parramatta.

Parramatta wouldn't have applied for it, because the guidelines weren't even released. The guidelines weren't released, and Parramatta is not in a region so it wouldn't have even been in the page of projects to be assessed. This is done behind closed doors within electorates that the government wishes to win. Based on a wink, wink, nudge, nudge: 'Apply for this; you'll get the money.' How is that fair? How could that possibly be in any set of rules that any reasonable, responsible government set? How could that possibly be okay?

This is taxpayers' money, and the process that you set in place should be transparent, it should be public, it should be known and it should be fair. And neither of these programs were anything like that. This is: 'We, the government, will use taxpayers' money to get ourselves elected.' That is clearly what it is. When the vast majority of money is going to marginal seats that the coalition are targeting, then that is what is happening. When money is being spent behind closed doors and the vast majority of electorates that aren't Liberal-held electorates don't even know it's going to be spent, that is a government that is using taxpayers' money to get itself elected.

I can't say that this government is corrupt—I can't say that in this place, and I won't—but this process is corrupt. If this process is within the rules, then have a hard look at yourselves because you are lousy rule-makers. I'll say it again: if you're the rule-maker, you don't get to hide behind the rules. You made the rules. If what you're doing is unethical and is not the best use of taxpayers' money, then change the rules and set the rules right now so that it can't happen again. This is outrageous. My pool and my community have lost out because of the rort and the corrupting of the process by this bunch of heaven-knows-what on the other side of the House.

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