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

I wish to take note of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit report, and particularly their report on the sports rorts scandal. Basically, this report of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit further underlines the work that we have been doing in the Senate in the select committee on the sports reports scandal. So we're pleased to see that the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit has agreed with the findings of the select committee and has raised the same issues as us, essentially going to the heart of the fact that the minister who signed off on deciding where money was going to be spent on these sports grants and questioning whether she had the legal authority to be the decision-maker. Really, this report raises the same issues that we've seen raised through the select committee interim report, the same issues of accountability and the same issues of the scandal of these grants being used, being directed, for political purposes basically for the government to try and win elections. In particular, it raises the issue of the hundreds of emails, the dozens of spreadsheets and the absolute unwillingness of this government to be accountable by the fact that they have withheld documents and they have refused to provide key information. This report really supports what we have found out in the select committee and highlights the critical point, which the Liberal Party have failed to answer, and that is that we want more information. It needs to be on the table for the Senate. In particular, we want Senator McKenzie, former Minister McKenzie, to come out of witness protection and tell us what went on. In particular, we think that Senator McKenzie should actually fess up and say it just wasn't all her idea, because the role of the Prime Minister in this is very clear from the evidence that we have considered in our committee and the evidence in the report of the joint committee we are talking about today.

We've had the Prime Minister refusing to answer questions about the role he played and the role that his office played in these sports rorts. We know that spreadsheets were attached to at least one letter from Senator McKenzie to the Prime Minister. We know that his minister was holding up decisions on which grants were going to be approved, because he hadn't seen lists or approved them. And we know that his office actually made changes to the grants allocations. So we actually think it's simply unfair that Senator McKenzie has been made to wear the political pain for this program when it's very clear that the Prime Minister was up to his neck in it. He and his office were profoundly involved in the rort. We've now got two reports that we have considered that make it very clear that Senator McKenzie should appear before the Senate committee and give a clear answer about what the Prime Minister knew. Keeping her in witness protection for so long is simply unfair to her and to the Australian people.

This matters because it goes to the heart of our democracy; it goes to the heart of the people of Australia being able to trust that the processes that are put in place are going to be fair, accountable and transparent. Clearly, determining which clubs got grants under this program was not transparent and not fair. We have a whole cohort of clubs that should have got grants, clubs that scored incredibly highly on Sport Australia's assessment, that missed out. We know that the fact that they missed out means an awful lot to them. We know that, having put in hundreds of hours of work for really worthy programs that scored really highly, that funding would have made a huge difference to them and their communities.

We want the Prime Minister to apologise. He should come clean and enable Senator McKenzie to come out of witness protection. Above all, as the sports rorts interim report that we're considering today says, we need transparency, accountability and a decision from the Prime Minister and this government to fund the sporting clubs that missed out.