Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's response.

This is another day, another failure by this coalition government to meet any kind of basic standard about transparency and accountability: 'Nup, we're not showing. Nah, nah, nah, we're not giving it to you!' I mean, what have they got to hide? There is absolutely no justification for public interest immunity. There is no justification for this document to be considered cabinet-in-confidence. But hiding behind secret documents is actually par for the course for this government, to use a sporting analogy. But this one we are not going to let go through. That is why we are here this morning—to unpack why this document matters, why having some transparency from this government matters. We are here this morning because the Australian community expect fairness. They expect a level playing field and for everyone to have a sporting chance, to use another sporting analogy.

Let's go back to why this matters. Somehow this report which we are not allowed to see, which the Australian community is not allowed to see, exonerated the sports minister from charges of rorting the sports grants program. This was despite a scathing report from the Auditor-General that clearly uncovered a 'distributional bias'—that was how they put it—in the awarding of grants; that is, pork-barrelling to win votes. If pork-barrelling were an Olympic sport, absolutely this government would be gold medal winners. But, sadly, the clear losers are the sporting clubs and the volunteers who live in safe seats such as where I live in the western suburbs of Melbourne. There, despite hours and hours of volunteer work and filling out applications, despite having really deserving projects, they were completely hobbled, completely nobbled, destined to finish at the back of the pack, because, as we now know, there was a secret process. What mattered wasn't the quality of your application; what mattered was whether the minister and, in particular, the Prime Minister decided your project could help them win the election. We need to see the Gaetjens report. If the Prime Minister is going to use it to defend his office and his government from claims of corruption then it needs to be made public.

As the minister said, Mr Gaetjens has made a submission to the select committee on the sports rorts. That is a first step. That submission at least acknowledged that the minister's office undertook a separate and non-transparent process in addition to the assessment by Sport Australia, but there are a number of key issues that the submission does not address. Firstly, and importantly, there is the role of the Prime Minister's office. The submission doesn't even mention the PMO. If the secret Gaetjens report also doesn't mention the PMO then clearly it was ignoring key facts that the Auditor-General could not ignore. The submission doesn't mention the ineligible grants. That is a key defence that the government are claiming: that every project was eligible. Well, as we now know, there were more than 200 grants—that is, 43 per cent—which were actually ineligible. But Gaetjens's submission doesn't mention those. The submission doesn't talk about fairness. It doesn't even address the issue of fairness or how to make things right for the clubs that missed out. The coalition should start by funding the clubs that would have been successful had the coalition not rorted the scheme.

But there's another issue that we need to address here as well—that is, the late projects, the ones that were successful even though they arrived much later than the others. Let's review what we already know from the ANAO report. The Prime Minister's office, we were told in the Auditor-General's report, told the minister's office that there were some projects that had missed the deadline, so on 4 March 2019 the minister's office asked Sport Australia for a blank copy of the application form. Keep in mind that applications had actually closed six months earlier. More than six months after the application deadline, the Prime Minister's office specifically intervened. And on 5 March, in response to concerns from Sport Australia, who said, 'Why should you be asking for forms now, six months after the applications closed?' the minister's office said they needed the forms to advocate in the budget process. But we know from the ANAO report that the funding of $42.5 million for a third round of projects had been sought and approved for the 2019 budget that same day. They didn't need it to advocate in the budget process. So it really looks very like the minister's office were actually lying to their portfolio agency about why they were requesting these application forms, lying in addressing the very reasonable concerns that Sport Australia had raised.

And then, two weeks later, in an amazing coincidence, these forms came back as applications for the project, with the minister's office directing Sport Australia to assess the four resubmitted and five totally new applications. Keep in mind that this wasn't another open round. Nobody else got the chance to put in applications. No-one else got the opportunity to resubmit their proposal or rewrite it. No-one else got the opportunity to do a late application, other than those that the minister's office had specifically sought out. The ANAO report notes:

Sport Australia reiterated its concerns that accepting the nine applications and assessing them without the involvement of an assessment panel would be outside the program guidelines.

Then, on 3 April 2019, days before the election was announced, the advice from Sport Australia about which projects should be funded under the third funding round was provided to the minister. They recommended that only one of these nine late projects should be funded. But, stunningly, what did the minister decide? Every single one of those nine late projects would be funded. Again from the ANAO:

While higher scored applications from the competitive process undertaken in August to September 2018 remained available for approval, each of these new or resubmitted applications were approved for funding as part of the third round.

So there are even more questions to answer here. What role did the Prime Minister's office play in relation to these late or resubmitted applications? And why were these projects, these special projects, given an opportunity that no-one else was? Is this addressed in the Gaetjens report? We don't know, because it's all secret.

In Victoria, we know that there were 56 applications that Sport Australia said should have been funded that missed out on $18.4 million in funding. Ron Cole from the Kyneton District Soccer Club said: 'We were very disappointed when we didn't get it, but we thought it was because our application wasn't good enough. Now we are gutted.'

There was one particular club, the Gippsland Ranges Roller Derby, in Traralgon, that provided an excellent submission to our select committee that's worth reading from:

Over a seven year period, Gippsland Ranges Roller Derby struggled to find a venue to operate our club and conduct our training from. We made 40+ separate enquiries each year since our inception and could not successfully secure a council or community provided space to train … The costs of the professional skating rink near us became prohibitive and we were forced to seek another venue or fold.

They didn't make an enormous application; it was for $44,000. They received a score from Sport Australia of 98 out of 100—the highest score of any application that was put in—but they didn't get funding. Again, they have an excellent question. There remains no explanation of why funds were awarded to applicants with considerably lower gradings on their applications for 10 times the amount requested by their clubs. If the criteria and merit based scoring are not relevant to the awarding of grants, it begs the question: why do applicants need to perform against them?

This is disgusting behaviour by this government and it should be ashamed of itself. It is not sporting behaviour. It is corruption. It is rorting. And it's done because the government thinks it can get away with it, because it thinks there will be no consequences. Things would be different if we had a federal anticorruption commission; governments might then think that there might be some consequences for such behaviour. And what do you know? There's a Greens bill that has been through this Senate, that the House of Representatives could vote on right now, that would provide a federal independent anticorruption commission. That would be an important first step. We need a system that's independent, that politicians can't use to try and buy elections.

The truth is that community sports matter, and fairness and transparency and accountability matter. Sports help people connect with their community and provide tremendous physical health benefits and mental health benefits. Everybody should have access to community sports but the sad truth is that not everybody does, because of the corrupt decisions made by the minister's office and potentially influenced by the Prime Minister's office. Worthy people, people who deserve to have access to community sports, have missed out.