Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is very interesting in this budget week that, rather than having any constructive response to a very well put together budget by the Treasurer, Mr Swan, and the Labor Party, the opposition goes back to its old mantra that it has been trying to push for so long now and moves the motion:

That the Senate notes the Rudd Labor Government’s waste and mismanagement of taxpayer money.’

This is a push fuelled mostly by the Australian, which has been plugging away at it for a long time. I would like to take the opposition senators back to the time of their government when waste and mismanagement were a hallmark of some of their policies—and pork-barrelling, as Senator Sterle points out. I know that this is something that we on this side of the house often quote, but I think it so clearly illustrates what the Howard government was about that I take this opportunity to quote it again.

The Senate committee inquiry had its origins in concerns raised about the approval of grants for certain projects. In this respect, in the first three years of the Programme examined by ANAO, departures from the published guidance were a feature of the Programme.

Of course, this is the regional rorts program. I continue:

For example, in that period:

• there were instances where no application for funding was received prior to funding being approved or the funding decision was not informed by a departmental assessment against the published Programme Guidelines and criteria;
• departmental assessments have been truncated, or ‘fast tracked’, or assessment procedures were not rigorously applied, such that DOTARS did not adequately scrutinise applications before providing advice to Ministers;
• projects had been approved for funding notwithstanding that one or more criteria had not been satisfied, combined with inadequate documentation of the basis for those decisions; and
• Ministerial funding decisions had been taken or revised through processes other than those provided for in the Programme Guidelines and procedures advised to applicants.