Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The government has provided $5.7 billion in funding to over 30 grants programs or funds, some of them new, some of them existing, in the 2020 budget. Some of these funds have themselves been the subject of what can only be described as notorious pork-barrelling. In earlier contributions I've referred to the sports rorts program. The Australian National Audit Office did a review of this scandal ridden program and found that 73 per cent of the projects had not been recommended to government by Sport Australia. That's 73 per cent! We know that there was a communication between the minister's office and the Prime Minister's office. We can be absolutely certain that this money was distributed not on the basis of sporting or community need, but on the political needs of the coalition running into a hotly contested election. We know that in this case the former Deputy Leader of the National Party and the former minister responsible for sport was asked to fall on her sword on behalf of government, to cop the bullet and resign her position because of this notorious sports rort affair.

We also know that the tentacles of rorts extended far beyond the Deputy Prime Minister's office. We know that the National Party has been asked to take the heat for the Liberal Party in this instance, and we know that the Deputy Leader of the National Party was forced to resign. Many may say that this was, perhaps, unfair because the real culprit in this affair was the Prime Minister. The real culprit in this affair was the head of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister, who was calling the shots in this notorious sports rorts affair, where more than seven out of every 10 program grants were not recommended.

We saw the examples. We saw the example of monies being granted to sports clubs for female change facilities where the club didn't have a female team; whereas you had other eligible grantees who did have female sports teams and who were after a change room for their facilities because they didn't want their daughters having to get changed in the bush behind the paddock. They got overlooked. They got overlooked because they didn't meet the political criteria which were determining the allocation of funds under this notoriously rorted program.

We also know that the government has fought tooth and nail against establishing a federal anticorruption commission because they do not want these sorts of programs interrogated by an independent body. We know that the government set up a whitewash inquiry to fit up the former Deputy Leader of the National Party in relation to the sports rorts affair.

In the context of all of that it is deeply concerning that the government has set up another $4.7 billion in grants programs, tipping more money into these buckets that already have a big question mark over them. Can the government confirm that it has provided $5.7 billion in funding to over 30 new or existing programs in these areas? Can the government confirm that 94 per cent of the grants from the Building Better Regions Fund issued in the months leading up to last year's election went to coalition-held seats? I'll say that number again: 94 per cent of the disbursements from the Building Better Regions Fund, in the lead-up to an election—absolute coincidence, I'm sure!—went to coalition-held seats. The $207.7 million allocated to this fund in this year's budget is at risk of further pork-barrelling. So the question to the government is: what processes is it going to put in place to ensure that we don't see a repeat of the notorious 'sports rorts' affair? Are we going to see another example of Leppington Triangle, where a Liberal Party mate and donor gets $27 million for a $3 million program— (Time expired)

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