Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday I sought leave to take note of documents tabled on 23 June 2008 by Senator Faulkner relating to sports grants and I was told that leave would be granted today. Therefore, I again seek leave to move to take note of the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

Often in politics, as in many other fields, the original offence is not a problem but the cover-up that follows the offence destroys careers. Accordingly, we could probably forgive or excuse or understand the massive pork-barrelling that was advanced by this government before the election; the duplicity, the culture of deceit, the argument that ‘we are fiscally conservative and we will not buy this election’. But they did, and it has clearly undermined the reputation of Mr Tanner, Mr Rudd and the machine men of the Labor Party. The problem is that there is an innocent victim in this, and it threatens to destroy her career because there is a cover-up of absolutely massive proportions.

The Minister for Sport boasted on television about 100 projects that had been committed to by the Rudd Labor government during the election campaign. Further information suggested there was over $100 million worth of pork-barrelling rolled out by the Rudd government, in opposition, for sports and community grants. These projects may indeed be worthwhile. Some of them may indeed pass the ‘prince of pork’ test. But I suspect that many of them will not. The Minister for Sport was asked to deliver a list of these projects through the Senate. While she showed enormous contempt for the Senate, as did whoever in the Labor leadership was delivering them up here, she was very proud to tell a House of Representatives committee last week that she had delivered on all the election commitments in this area.

A list of election commitments cannot be that hard to provide, even for the most inexperienced minister or member of parliament. The Senate asked for the documents to be laid on the table. What was produced was not 100 projects, not an additional 30 projects, but a total of 35 projects which included the original 15 that had been provided. This is absolute contempt of this place by not only the Labor leadership here but also the minister herself. It has undermined the standing of the minister, and some of the Labor leadership here, I have to tell you. But the buck has to stop somewhere and, unfortunately, in this case, it doesn’t stop with Mr Rudd, no matter how much he claims that it should; it stops with Minister Ellis. The cover-up is an absolute scandal.

Let us look at the list for a moment and examine what is missing. There are a whole lot of things missing from the list, but I am going to create the Senate version of The Rich List TV show and we will just deal with, say, a top eight today. Let us have a look at the seat of Makin. Tony Zappia, the new member for Makin, is proudly boasting about the pork barrel grants that have been issued there: $200,000 for the Para Hills Soccer Club, $50,000 for the Ingle Farm Soccer Club, $50,000 for the Golden Grove baseball club. Were any of these on Minister Ellis’s election commitment list? The answer is no. What about the $1 million for the North East Hockey Club, the $875,000 for the Hope Valley community centre or the $500,000 for the Tea Tree Gully football club? Were any of these on the list that Minister Ellis provided? The answer is no. But what about the $160,000 commitment to the Traralgon West sports complex? The minister herself reannounced this project on the 20th of this month. On the 23rd of this month, when the documents were tabled, do you think that was on the list? The answer is no, it was not on the list. None of these things were on the list—and the list of what was not on the list is enormous.

Let me turn my mind to one other project. What about the Penrith Valley sports hub—do you think that was on the list? Yes, it was. Finally, something is on the list, and it was on the list to the tune of $250,000 in grants. There is nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that the $250,000 worth of grants to the Penrith Valley sports hub is listed in the budget papers as a $5 million grant. There is a $4.7 million black hole: a cover-up of monumental proportions. It is a cover-up that is caused by incompetence, incapacity or instruction. Any one of those three means that Minister Ellis needs to get her whiteboard in order. Need I remind her of what happens if your whiteboard is not in order? Her predecessor Ros Kelly lost her job over sports rorts No.1. No-one is blaming Minister Ellis for announcing these grants because she inherited the portfolio afterwards. But now we have got sports rorts 2, and that means that Minister Ellis is going to wear it. She has been asked to become a human shield for the fragile but gigantic ego of the ‘prince of pork’ himself, the Prime Minister. The challenge now is for Minister Ellis to wheel out the whiteboard—