Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last year, the Kyneton District Soccer Club applied for a community sports infrastructure grant. An independent assessment by Sports Australia gave the club a score of 87 out of 100. With 74 the cut-off for funding, the club clearly had a winning score. But then the Morrison government's secret assessment process got its claws into these grants and the game was fixed: the club got nothing. And why? Because the club was located in the seat of the member for Bendigo and was not a coalition target seat.

That the sports rorts scandal reveals government corruption is beyond question, but the response to this scandal by the Prime Minister reveals far more, because the response of Mr Morrison to this corruption is not to clean it up but to cover it up—in this case, with a secret report by a former Liberal Party staffer that the Prime Minister refuses to let the Australian people see. It is said that the fish rots from the head, and the stench from this scandal is strongest in the Prime Minister's office.

Australia needs a national integrity commission, and we need one now, because only a real national integrity commission—one with all the independence, powers and resources of a standing royal commission into corruption—can uncover and eradicate the corruption that surrounds the Morrison government.