Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

The explanation has been given, this time, by Minister Cash representing then Minister McCormack, who was the responsible minister at the time of these pre-election sports rorts 2 grants. And what do you know? The dog ate Minister McCormack's homework as well as Minister Colbeck's homework! It seems they've got quite a bevy of canines eating all of these very revealing documents that they are desperate for nobody to see. Once again, they've asked for more time, and, once again, we're expecting that when that time comes, we will be told that: 'Actually no; sorry, you can't have those documents because they are deeply embarrassing to our government.' This is what we saw happen yesterday with the Senate's request for the Gaetjens report, the report which somehow magically found that there was nothing to see, and that there had been no sports rorts—even though the independent Auditor-General said clearly this was a massive rort. Those are my words, not his, but they were the implications of the findings of that report.

So here we are again. The Senate is begging the government to show some transparency, to show some guts and to have some decency, but the government actually doesn't have the standards, the moral compass, to say, 'We're going to put these documents in the public domain.' The Senate is forcing the government to reveal these documents and the government's not even coming at that request. So here we are again, a government in complete disarray, rort after rort piling up, and they're desperately trying to pull up the shutters and hope that somehow they can protect themselves from actual scrutiny, but it's not working.

As I said before, we asked for these documents because we actually want to get to the bottom of sports rorts number 2. We already know that in sports rorts number 1 guidelines were ignored, money was dished out and there was a colour coded spreadsheet for which marginal seat would get which grant to shore up this government's flailing political stocks. With sports rorts 2, there weren't even any guidelines at all; the government just hand-picked where that money was going to go, sometimes against the wishes of the local councils in those areas. We have sought documents to examine: did anybody advise the government? Did our frank and fearless public service do their job and say, 'You really should have some guidelines?' We are confident that the department would have issued such advice, and the public deserve to see whether this government simply, once again, ignored that frank and fearless advice. But we'll have to wait and see whether we get that material. Don't hold your breath, folks.

We also wanted to know what the communications were between outgoing Minister McCormack, who was responsible for this program at the time, pre-election, and incoming Minister Colbeck, who is now responsible for the administration of this program. We want to know what they said to each other about how on earth they were going to explain this second instalment of sports rorts. How can they possibly explain the dishing out of public money in marginal seats, right before an election, with no guidelines, with no application process and with a purported focus on female sports change room facilities that actually just ended up being swimming pools in coalition seats? That correspondence would be very interesting indeed, and no doubt that's why the government has asked for more time. It's also, no doubt, why they will eventually say, 'Oh, that's cabinet in confidence,' or, 'That public interest immunity,' as we saw happen earlier in the week.

The other thing that we asked was: was there any correspondence about deciding who would be asked to apply for this unsought public largess for swimming pools in marginal seats? We want to know: is there another colour coded spreadsheet that dictates where this public money is going to go for political purposes? In sports rorts 1, it was leaked to the media that the Prime Minister's office played an integral role in directing where that money would go, despite the fact that then Minister McKenzie took the fall for that decision. We've asked this time around: what role did the Prime Minister or his office have in this sports rorts 2 saga?' We know he was there, grinning like he does, announcing this money. Did he, in fact, hand-pick where this money was going to go? We know a fish rots from the top. We saw that the Prime Minister was implicated in sports rorts 1. We want to know if he's behind sports rorts 2 as well. That's another reason why we are not expecting to see those documents provided by this government, which does not know how to govern in a transparent or accountable way.

Here we are again. The Senate is doing the government's job for it—trying to insist on some standards of transparency and accountability and the disclosure of important documents, and the government is once again trying to say: 'That's the Canberra bubble. There's nothing to see. This was all about women having somewhere to get changed to play sport.' I wish it had been, but we know 13 per cent of that money ended up actually going to women's change rooms and 60 per cent of it went to swimming pools in coalition seats.

It's not just the Greens and the opposition crossbench and the Australian public that are outraged by this. In fact, former Liberal leader John Hewson has also had a lot to say about sports rorts 1 and 2. In the papers this morning he says:

Voters, certainly, are sick to death of it. The National Party carries on, seeing such programs as slush funds for the Nationals' interest, not the national interest, blithely disregarding the erosion of their standing in regional Australia.

He finishes by saying:

Being elected to politics is not a ticket to put your snout in the funding trough.

Never has a truer word been spoken, but I wonder if the current Liberal leadership team will actually listen to the wise words of their former party leader on the need for integrity. Again, don't hold your breath, folks.

But we have seen very interesting political intervention by the new Nationals deputy leader. David Littleproud has conceded that the partisan allocation of projects by party representation in marginal seats is 'not the best way to do it,' despite the fact that the Prime Minister has repeatedly defended the program. It's all very politically interesting—the dynamics between the coalition. And we're all watching with horror at the way the parties are eating themselves up, because this parliament should be dealing with real issues that affect and assist every day Australians. But these guys are too busy fighting amongst themselves to get anything done. They didn't have a policy platform before the election; they just dished out public funds for swimming pools, desperate to buy some credibility and buy some support, and now they're eating themselves up.

A former Sports Commission employee and sports policy historian, Mr Greg Blood, has said

My concern is that election-funding announcements are bypassing the need for evidence-based decision-making in regards to community sport facilities. … Funding facilities without an assessment of need is unlikely to provide optimal outcomes.

That's a very measured way of describing the fact that this money was not sought, that there was no application process, that there were no guidelines. It was just a $150 million slush fund for this government to buy their way back into government. They tried to say that it was for women. What a surprise that women didn't end up getting almost any of the money! Fourteen per cent is all they got. And the whole sorry saga just continues to roll on.

Here we have the Senate, once again, trying to insist on some very basic standards of accountable government and, once again, this government's refusing to oblige. I think it thinks it's getting away with it, but the sentiment out there in the community is that they are fed up with this government being so self-invested. They are fed up with vested interests running this government. They're fed up with the government caring more about themselves and who's running their bunch of people than actually dealing with the issues that ordinary Australians are struggling with. The community wants better funding for schools and hospitals. They want clean energy. They want an increase in Newstart. The Prime Minister can find $150 million for swimming pools but he can't find any money to actually help people—to reduce out-of-pocket school fees for people at public schools, to increase Newstart. The priorities of this government are just hideous and they continue to be exposed on rort after rort. Well, the public have absolutely had it with this government, and we here at the Greens cannot wait for the next election. This kind of conduct deserves to be roundly meted out with condemnation to the opposition benches for hopefully a very, very long time.