Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

What is very clear is that the Prime Minister, as he has said, and the Prime Minister's Office made representations in relation to specific projects, and the final decision-maker was the minister for sport. What I would also remind the chamber of is that, as a result of the minister making decisions to more fairly spread the grants geographically across sports, the proportion of projects going into Labor seats increased from 26 per cent to 135 per cent. The independent recommendations from Sport Australia, in the minister's judgement, would have inappropriately disadvantaged Labor electorates. So in exercising her discretion, making sure that all of the sports were appropriately supported and that the funding was allocated across— (Time expired)