Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Madam Deputy President, for again letting us talk about the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. This program rolled out over 600 grants to small community sports clubs across Australia. Let's not forget that the assessment process undertaken by the minister meant that Labor got more grant projects in their electorates than they would have otherwise have got. Let's talk about what the Leader of the Opposition actually said on Facebook on 18 March 2019:

I am pleased to announce that the restoration of the historic Dawn Fraser Baths has received a further boost with a $500,000 grant from Sport Australia.

That was from Mr Anthony Albanese, the Leader of the Opposition. That was three weeks after the shadow Attorney-General first wrote to the ANAO raising concerns over the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. So Labor loved this program just as much as we did, this program that got money to small community sports clubs and to our kids in areas across Australia. Labor electorates, Liberal electorates and National Party electorates across Australia benefited from this grant program.

Even on 20 July last year the Deputy Leader of the Opposition wrote on Facebook:

Pleased to support Geelong Soccer Club and celebrate a recent $500,000 announcement, that will fund an additional 2 new pitches. Soccer is alive and well in Geelong.

This just goes to show that there is no-one who can actually point to any of the successful recipients of this grant program and say, 'Actually they shouldn't get that money; they should give that money back'—not one of them. All of these project grants—it doesn't matter whether they went to Labor or Liberal electorates—have been welcomed by the communities which they went to. This program has definitely benefited, in my interest, regional Australia and it has benefited small community sporting clubs, which is exactly what our focus should be. It's about the grassroots. It's about getting money out there. It's about getting kids involved and playing.

Some of the other Labor seats that benefited included: Ballarat, with nine projects worth over $976,000; Bendigo, with five projects; Corio, with three projects; Franklin, with four projects; Fremantle, with four projects; Hindmarsh, with six projects; Hunter, with five projects; and Isaacs, with six projects. All of these projects possibly wouldn't have got funding had the minister relied purely on the Sport Australia ranking. In fact, if the minister relied on the Sport Australia ranking, 231 fewer projects would have received funding. That's 231 community sports organisations that would not have had funding to complete their projects, get kids active and provide facilities for their regional communities.

Let me just take the opportunity to remind those opposite, who are focused on the Prime Minister's engagement with the minister's office, that I would hope that my Prime Minister is talking to his ministers. The Auditor-General found that, while there were many representations coming into the minister's office about the grant funding program, our interest was in the decision-making process for the allocation of funding, and the reason we didn't go into the representations was that—and I quote—'I didn't feel that it was material for the decision-making process.' The Auditor-General himself did not find that the correspondence or representations from the Prime Minister's office— (Time expired)