Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Both of the previous opposition members have warned that they are writing to the Auditor-General on this matter. The Manager of Opposition Business is picking up the pen; he's writing to the Auditor-General. The member for Sturt wants to write to the Auditor-General. There is a lot of letter writing going on. I hope when they write those letters that the members opposite mention in their correspondence to the audit office, and tack on an apology for, the Community Health and Hospitals Program that they presided over. Members will remember that this was the Morrison government program the Auditor-General found 'fell short of ethical requirements'. This was a waste of $2 billion. In its scathing report, the Auditor-General assessed 63 major projects under the scheme. Of those 63 projects, guess how many the Auditor-General found had been assessed properly by the then Morrison government? Two—two of those 63 projects. The other 61 missed the mark. In the words of the ANAO:

The Department of Health and Aged Care's administration of the Community Health and Hospitals Program was ineffective and fell short of ethical requirements.

I hope when the member for Sturt is writing to the Auditor-General, he tacks on a little apology for that program. I also hope that in the member for Bradfield's letter to the Auditor-General he pops in a quick apology for the sport rorts program. Everyone will remember that before the May 2019 election then sports minister Senator McKenzie and her office funnelled a hundred million dollars to coalition electorates. The Auditor-General found that Senator McKenzie and her staff used public money to look after their own side's naked self-interest. The ANAO reports states that their private judgements were inconsistent with the published guidelines that applicant organisations had carefully obeyed in their own submissions. So I hope that, as they write to the Auditor-General, they remember to tack on apologies for all of the rorts and maladministered programs under their government.

Unfortunately, their letter-writing campaign so far hasn't borne fruit. It's an unrequited letter-writing campaign! Not since Christmas-time at the playgroup have there been so many letters sent that haven't been returned! It's disappointing, but maybe they'll get a reply someday soon.

The biggest problem with their suggestions that the Auditor-General should look into this is that they were the government that tried to gut the ANAO. Through successive budget cuts and budget pauses, the Morrison government tried to cut the funding and reduce the resources of the Auditor-General, and the Auditor-General, in an astounding public remark, an astounding rebuke of the Morrison government, said that the ongoing cuts to his office 'will continue to reduce the ANAO's capacity to deliver performance audits into the future'.

Now, the possibility of reducing the number of audits that the ANAO could do was of great concern to the Morrison government—in fact, they wanted to reduce the number of audits that the ANAO could do, because they had delivered so many scathing reports about Morrison government programs. They had delivered scathing reports about their health program, about their sports program, about the $30 million of taxpayers' money funnelled to a Liberal donor for Western Sydney airport land worth no more than $3 million. In report after report, the Morrison government kept the ANAO busy looking into poorly administered and unethical programs that were consistently run by their government.

The Labor Party didn't need to write a whole lot of letters to the ANAO to get them to look into these things. It was blatantly obvious that they were rorts, that they were inappropriate uses of public funds, and the Auditor-General was consistently scathing in his review of those programs. So I'm glad the Liberal Party have re-found their love of the Auditor-General. I'm glad they're back on good terms and back in communication. But when they write to him, they should make sure they include a couple of apologies for all the awful programs that they themselves ran.

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