Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate with regard to this ministerial statement, particularly the letter that's been tabled today by the minister relating to the refusal by the government, via Sport Australia, to comply with a request from the Senate to provide documents for the Senate inquiry into the sports grants saga. I'll make clear to the Senate that these documents relate to the legal authority the minister had to make decisions about these grants. We have always questioned whether the minister actually had the legal authority to make these decisions. It is a concern that many legal submissions made to the committee have questioned the legal authority that the minister had. The only basis that the public has for believing that the minister had legal authority to make these decisions is a piece of legal advice that the Attorney-General has hold of but will not make public. That is the only information that we have.

In the letter, the acting chair of Sport Australia noted that there are current legal proceedings on foot. But I want to make clear to the Senate that the members of this committee have gone about this in a very deliberate way. We understand that legal professional privilege isn't always a ground for a public interest immunity claim and that when there are legal proceedings on foot we do need to be careful in that respect. We have asked for this evidence to be in camera so we can at least understand what advice Sport Australia had and what understanding they had about the minister's legal authority. We have asked for it to be in camera and it has not been provided. That's why the interim report put a recommendation to the Senate, and the Senate supported that recommendation. The Senate supported the recommendation to request this information because it's crucial for the public to understand how badly the government mismanaged taxpayer funds, when it came to making decisions about who would receive this money.

We know there are so many circumstances in this saga that the government is refusing to make public. There are numerous documents that the government has refused to make public, and not just to our inquiry. Everyone is familiar with the Gaetjens report. The Prime Minister wasn't happy with the Auditor-General's report and what that said, so he went to get his own report from Mr Gaetjens. That report was completed and—what do you know!—it said that nothing was wrong here, that nothing untoward had been done, and that we don't need to worry about this matter anymore. But that report has not been made public. Not a single member of the public, a single member of the Senate or anyone on this committee has had the opportunity to read that report so we can understand what questions were asked, what witnesses were questioned and what documents the report had access to. Without that information, this committee, the Senate and members of the public can only conclude that the government is covering this up. Otherwise, you would release the information and make it public.

Why is it a concern? We know that the government ran a parallel process. The minister, in conjunction with the Prime Minister's office—there were 136 emails—ran a parallel process to make recommendations about where these funds should go. Sport Australia had a merit assessment process. They scored applications. People who have experience with sport—understanding where these funds should go and assessing applications on their merit—were the ones who made the decision. When that list made its way over to the minister's office, the Prime Minister intervened and said: 'No, no, no. We've got an election coming up. We need to make sure there are enough announcements in our marginal seats so we can stand next to a big cheque, get a photo and make sure this money is going to people for their votes'—not to the people who might need the money, not to the sporting clubs that had done the hard work to make sure they had a really good application. They made sure this money only went to the people whose votes they needed. That is not how the government should be handing out taxpayer funds.

There's another reason why the government doesn't want to let anyone know the truth of this scandal. Senator Farrell is right: we are not letting this go. We are not letting this go because when we finally get these documents they will show that the Prime Minister was intimately involved in this scandal. There were 136 emails back and forth between the Prime Minister's office and the minister's office. They included several examples of the colour-coded spreadsheet, and changes to that spreadsheet were requested by the Prime Minister's office multiple times. They were working with CHQ, their campaign headquarters, to make these changes. It was a politicised process; it shouldn't have been. None of these sporting clubs were told, 'Don't bother applying unless you live in one of our marginal seats.' That is what people need to know. How was this process allowed to occur?

I want to draw the Senate's attention to one of the documents that we have received. I think it shines a light on why we know this government is not going to provide any other documents, why this government is going to ignore a resolution of the Senate. This is an email from the executive director of sports partnerships in Sport Australia on 5 December 2018. It is one of the documents that we have actually managed to get, through the estimates process and through this inquiry. It goes to show that, when we do get the documents, they paint a very grim picture for this government. This email, sent to the Prime Minister's office and cc'd to the CEO of Sport Australia, refers to the changes the minister has made to the decisions in this program. It says: 'We also recognise your comments that, in making changes to the approved list, the minister's office used a ratings scale provided by Sport Australia as a reference. But the minister is advised that, as the delegate, she may need to defend the decisions at Senate estimates'—that is, if changes were made she could not state that she approved the recommended decisions in the industry panel that followed due process where a rigorous, transparent and defensible process took place. Sport Australia tried to warn the minister that she shouldn't go down this road, because she would end up having to answer questions about not following the recommendations of Sport Australia. We know that the government was warned. We know that good people in Sport Australia had very grave concerns about this process and they raised those concerns with the minister. They said to the minister, 'Hey, wait a second—you might not want to go down this track, because, if you do, you'll be doing the wrong thing.'

But those in the government didn't care. All they had in their sights was the election and getting themselves re-elected. It was all about protecting their own jobs—about getting themselves back into their cushy jobs—and not about doing the right thing by the sporting clubs and the people who made these applications and the people in the public who expect better from this government.

This letter today is not unexpected, but it is unacceptable. It is unacceptable that a committee of the Senate and the Senate itself is not being given the information it needs to understand what has gone wrong here. We know the reason that we are not being given this information: it's because the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was at the head of this scandal. The more documents we receive—because we're not giving up—the more they will show that the Prime Minister led the sports rorts scandal and he let Minister McKenzie take the fall. And we're not going to stop until we've found them.