Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister for raffles and storming Parliament House! Well, Minister Wong, what I am actually trying to do is to put on record something which is relevant, I might say, to the sporting community. If you do not think that is important, I have to say that shows one of the big gaps in your own armoury, Senator.

I would say to Minister Ellis that no-one is accusing her of making these grants. These were all done by the machine men in the Labor Party. We know that Labor Party candidates in some marginal seats were given a bucket of money and were asked to go around and spend it. We are just a trifle suspicious, Senator Wong, that some of these grants may have been given on a basis which could not be justified to anyone, including the Auditor-General. So what I suspect is going to happen, and I know that my colleague Senator Bernardi is going to pursue this matter with enormous vigour, is that at one stage the Auditor-General will come into this—there is no question of that—and he will be looking carefully at the sorts of grants that were made. For example, when now Prime Minister Rudd went out to a Macedonian sports club outside Perth and promised a million dollars, what was the paperwork like? What was the proposal like? Was there a proposal which was actually there or was this just a desire to create another— (Time expired)