Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The report of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit into the Commonwealth grants administration contains an absolutely damning truth for those opposite, although, sadly, it's not one that the Australian people have come to be surprised by when it comes to the former Liberal government. The former Liberal government rorted billions of dollars to serve their political purposes. They threw grant rules and guidelines as well as program guidelines out the window as they sought to allocate funds to serve their own needs. The scale of the evidence presented to the committee was absolutely staggering, and it was clear that the former government was simply treating public money like it was Liberal Party money. Indeed, their sense of entitlement had clearly come to a point that it was stifling their sense of morality. In disappointingly characteristic fashion, the former Liberal government had no regard for transparency or due process, instead pursuing industrial-scale rorting to serve their craven political interests.

While the contents of the report are incredibly disappointing, they are, sadly, not surprising. The former Liberal government's record of rorting is well known right across this country, particularly for those organisations who found themselves on the wrong side of these improper grant processes. Many of these organisations are in my electorate of Hawke, many of them in communities that face structural disadvantage and socioeconomic challenges. They are those that the former Liberal government was so willing to leave behind and excluded from these public interest considerations.

The committee heard that in some grant programs local councils simply stopped applying after establishing an evidence based belief that, due to factors entirely outside the grant guidelines or principles, they would never be successful. It was so blatantly obvious that the grants were not being fairly awarded that people—the Australian people, our communities—simply lost trust in the Liberal government's interest in serving their needs.

While the evidence was as clear as it was damning, some members of the committee produced a dissenting report. However, this report doesn't actually disagree with the recommendations. It just doesn't acknowledge—it entirely fails to acknowledge—the egregious politicisation of the grant process under the former Liberal government. It is staggering that, despite the enormous volume of evidence that the public trust was breached and public funds were unfairly and immorally allocated, the Liberals still can't concede that what they did with billions of dollars of taxpayer money was simply wrong. This is particularly staggering for coalition member of the committee, who were presented with evidence of rorting across the multibillion-dollar Urban Congestion Fund, which included the infamous commuter car parks, various regional grants programs, the regional grants fund—hello, Sydney pool—and the Safer Communities Fund.

The committee acknowledges the important role that ministerial discretion can and, indeed, should play in government decision-making. There are no doubt instances where this discretion can be appropriately exercised to ensure an outcome that is in the public interest. However, it is also appropriate that these decisions are examined and that ministers aren't left to freely throw money around without scrutiny—in this case, to serve their craven political interests with zero transparency or accountability to taxpayers and the Australian people.

With this report, the committee is making six recommendations designed to strengthen processes around the awarding of public grants. These include making the merit-based, competitive process the default, as well as including in program guidelines how advocacy from stakeholders—including MPs, who importantly play the role of representation here in this place—will be considered in that broader process. The committee is also recommending that when grants are awarded against the recommendation of the relevant agency—sometimes with very good reason—the decision is clearly recorded, reported to the finance minister and published online. As I said, it's often necessary—and many times has been—but there must be transparency and accountability when this occurs. There must be an explanation for the Australian people about how and why a minister has made a decision in contrast to the advice coming up from their department.

The committee is further recommending that the criteria against which grant applications are assessed be fully transparent. As the Liberal rorting was exposed, the former Liberal government used to cite unspecified 'other factors' in a poor attempt to legitimise their politicisation of these grants processes. This recommendation would prevent this deceptive trick from being used again.

While it is incredibly disappointing that this report has not received bipartisan support from committee members, I don't think it should be a matter of partisanship that we expect the highest standards of accountability and transparency when it comes to decision-making and the dispensing of public funds. I again note that they aren't actually disagreeing with the recommendations; they're simply using it as a vehicle to make pathetic excuses for their poor governance and, frankly, for their politicised decision-making that had such detrimental impacts on communities such as mine. I hope that the recommendations receive bipartisan support and that that goes some way to rebuilding public trust in Commonwealth grants administration.

I'd particularly like to think the chair of the committee, the member for Bruce, whose leadership and hard work in delivering this report and all of the work that went behind it has been a hallmark of the Albanese government—that we would strive every day in this place to restore public trust and confidence in the institutions of government, whether that be in the public sector around our Public Service employees and the critical institution that that represents or that be in the decision-making that happens at the very highest levels of executive government. While I again note that those opposite have chosen to provide their dissenting report—weak and pathetic as that report might be—I know that there are members opposite, individuals, who do believe in strengthening the institutions of government and in upholding the moral obligations that we as individuals have when we're elected to this place.

I strongly encourage those opposite, despite the institutional pressures of their party to defend the former prime minister Morrison, his cabinet and the decisions that they made—I know that that has some very awkward consequences for the current opposition leader, and we've seen that aired in public spaces over the last number of days. But it should not be a partisan issue. The restoration of public confidence in government and of accountability and transparency around decision-making and the dispensing of public funds should not be matters of partisanship. These should be issues, values and principles that all members of this place can get behind. I strongly encourage those members who know better and believe in a better sense of government to put the partisanship aside and get on board with supporting the recommendations in this report so that we can get on with doing the work required.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I first acknowledge the work of the member for Bruce on the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit.

What is it to be an adult? For those of us who have worked with children and young people most of our lives, it's a really simple thing: you demonstrate that you're an adult when you're prepared to admit mistakes, take responsibility for them and change your behaviour. What is it to be an adult government? Being an adult government is when you can admit your mistakes, take responsibility for them, and change your behaviours.

This report demonstrates to us clearly, once again, that the former government are still not capable of taking those adult steps either individually or collectively. The report goes through a damning litany of what's colloquially known as pork-barrelling that occurred under their watch. We saw the headlines. We read about it every day. We spoke about it from the opposition benches every day, because there wasn't just the joy that some communities had because there was an announcement of a grant that was made, as strange as that grant process might have seemed to people, or people having questions about whether the recipient of that grant process was worthy in a competitive environment. The other side to that coin was the hundreds of thousands of Australians in communities who received nothing, who were locked out of grant programs by reason of geography, not by need.

In my community, this was felt deeply, as it was in a community like the member for Hawke's, where growth is happening every day. When I first came to this place in 2013, I represented the entire city of Wyndham, and I now represent about half of the city of Wyndham, because we are now at 300,000 people. This is a city that struggles to get young people to play sport because we are battling to get the playing fields, courts and pitches rolled out in time for new housing development. Imagine what the people in my community thought about the Stronger Regions Fund, from which we were locked out, granting $10 million to the inner-city North Sydney pool. You can imagine how that was felt in my community. As the chair's foreword in the report articulates, that didn't just result in disappointment; that resulted in a loss of faith in government, a loss of faith in democracy and a loss of faith in the institutions that keep our democracy strong.

This isn't the only case that we have found since we took government when we have looked back. We've seen it with the robodebt. Time and time again, I rose in this place to outline the unfair impacts that was having in my community. Yesterday and the day before, what have we seen from the opposition, the former government? A denial of responsibility for that program. Similarly, here we have a denial of responsibility for the programs that saw, quite bluntly, an absolute travesty of justice.

In my community, the former Gillard and Rudd Labor governments introduced the Regional Rail Link, at great expense to the federal government. In my community, where new train stations are and where an extra 100,000 people now live, was there money for a car park? Was there money for car parks at either Tarneit station, Wyndham Vale station, Williams Landing station, Werribee station, or Hoppers Crossing Station? No, there was not. Yet, as the audit found, there were car parks committed in Victoria, in the seat of Kooyong. They were never built, strangely enough. They never came to be.

Imagine you're in voter land and you live in Wyndham Vale. There they are on the television screen saying: 'We're going to more commuter car parks in Kooyong, where most residents already live 800 metres from a train station, a bus stop or a tram stop. We'll give them some commuter car parks because they might need to drive the 800 metres and park their cars for the day.' Meanwhile, in my patch, people live five kilometres from a train station and they can live up to three kilometres from the closest bus stop.

Imagine the disrespect they now hold for this place.

Our first job as government is to make sure that the Australian public understand that we will clean this up and that we will take the recommendations from this committee report and enact them to ensure that the public can have faith that there has been due diligence in these processes and that there has been a demonstrated need—not just a demonstrated need because I want it—against other needs in other communities. The worst of this is that we had 10 years where my community missed out because need wasn't taken into consideration. When analysis was done, as was reported at the time, decisions were made not based on need or demand or how you might best enhance someone's life but based on how you might win an election. They were based on partisan decisions around marginal seats and safe seats that did not take into consideration the needs in seats like mine that were Labor seats across the last decade.

Every day now I work in my community to make sure that people understand that this government will not behave that way and that this government will ensure that growth areas like ours are at the table—hence the meetings that we've had up here in government where my local council have been present. The mayor has been in meetings with ministers, and the Treasurer visited our electorate quite recently so that they were given the time to actually lay out the things that are so desperately needed after 10 years of a government that didn't look at us sideways.

The now opposition, the Liberal-National coalition, have a duty of care in this space now too. For the Australian public to believe and to rebuild their faith in the Australian government—in the Commonwealth—they need those opposite to take responsibility, to do the mea culpa and to do what we ask people to do every day. They did the wrong thing. In secondary schools, we say it all the time: 'Are you sorry, or are you sorry you got caught?' Tell me what the difference is when a young person actually sits with you and says, 'I'm really sorry because I understand the impact of what I did,' rather than, 'I'm sorry because I got caught.' The opposition now need to look us in the eye across the chamber and tell us, yes, they're sorry they got caught, but they're also sorry that they did this—they're sorry that they denigrated the public's faith in this institution, not just now, but time and time again.

We can start with the Leader of the Opposition. He can start by stopping backing former prime minister Morrison, saying that robodebt had nothing to do with him. He can start by calling that out. He can come to the dispatch box today at any point during the day and, on indulgence, say, 'These are the things that I'll do differently from my predecessors. These are the things that I will do differently as a leader.' It starts with, 'We made mistakes.' It starts with, 'We did the wrong thing.' It starts with, 'I will take responsibility for the actions that were put in place by a cabinet that I was a member of.' Let's start there. Those opposite can choose to join us in rebuilding the public's faith in our institutions and in our programs, particularly around our spending, or they can choose to go down in history and be left behind and called out for leaving vulnerable people behind, targeting vulnerable people and leaving communities like mine to be adrift for a decade.

Debate adjourned.