Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If Senator McGrath wants to talk about a scandal, he wants to be listening to me. What's the biggest scandal to happen in this parliament in the past—at least—decade? That's the sports rorts affair. The minister for sports, Senator McKenzie, has resigned. But her resignation has come several weeks too late, and it was for the wrong reason anyway. Even after her resignation she still refuses to accept responsibility for the widespread rorting of $100 million in taxpayers' funds, despite the finding of the Auditor-General's report.

I know the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, would like to think this matter is closed with Senator McKenzie's resignation, but, sadly, the rort goes much further than the former minister and her office.

The Community Sports Infrastructure Grants program was supposed to be awarded on merit. Instead, it was hijacked by those opposite to become a brazen exercise in pork-barrelling to marginal electorates, a slush fund paid for by the Australian taxpayers to finance the re-election of the Morrison government. Many, many Australians are outraged, as am I. I wish I could say I was shocked, but, after seven years of those opposite in power, seeing politics put ahead of public interest is exactly what I've come to expect. The ANAO report revealed that Senator McKenzie, as then sports minister, took a merit based program and overrode it with a brazenly political allocation of funds. CSIG projects that were assessed by Sport Australia as being highly meritorious, some with scores of 90 per cent or more, were overlooked in favour of project with scores as low as 40.

Furthermore, the minister's office demanded projects in marginal electorates be included, despite their applications being submitted after the closing date. They assessed the projects using a spreadsheet that colour-coded them according to the party that held their electorate and whether it was a targeted seat or not. Elected non-government members in marginal seats were denied information on successful grants, or it was sent to them by snail mail, while Liberal candidates made announcements about them, having been of course emailed the information, often armed with giant prop cheques.

Senator McKenzie reportedly ignored advice from Sport Australia that the agency was being compromised by her political interference. A whistleblower from the minister's office told Sky News that they had raised concerns about the way the program was being administered. The whistleblower revealed that they were not the only staff member in the minister's office to raise concerns about the process, only to be told by her chief of staff that this was how it would be done. The minister received multiple warnings about the propriety of her pork-barrelling, yet she went ahead anyway.

The ANAO said there was no legal authority evident under which the minister was able to approve the grants. I think it is worth dwelling on the words 'no legal authority'. Given the government's flawed robodebt system was found to be illegal, despite them insisting for three years that it wasn't, we have good reason to question whether the government's conduct was legal in relation to these grants. Every time the former minister was questioned about this scandal, she batted away the questions by asserting that every project that was funded was eligible for funding under the guidelines. This may be true, but it completely misses the point.

In defence of the government's handling of the program, Mr Morrison said at the National Press Club:

… let's remember why we were doing it, because we didn't want to see girls changing in cars or out the back of the sheds rather than having their own changing facilities. That's why we did it.

Well, Mr Morrison's explanation does not stack up. It was reported in TheGuardian that 12 applications for grants to build or upgrade female change rooms were rejected. One of those applications was from a club where women and girls have been changing in tents. All of those applications received excellent scores through the process, run by Sport Australia, including one which scored 94 out of 100, one of the highest scores in the country. Despite presenting a strong case, women and girls in these clubs are still changing in cars and toilet blocks or having to wait for male players to vacate their change rooms.