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

Thank you. I move:

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

Essentially, this was a very simple yes/no question. There is a lack of a response to a question on notice from estimates about letters between then Minister McKenzie and the Prime Minister in relation to the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. I asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet about whether they had seen a copy of the letters that former Minister McKenzie wrote to the Prime Minister in late 2018 after they had met to seek an expansion of funding for the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. I asked whether the department and the secretary were aware of those letters at the time they were sent. What I was told in estimates was that they didn't believe so, but they would need to check to make sure that the answer was accurate. And, five months on from October, we don't yet know whether that answer was accurate. The response to the question is overdue; it's now February.

In fact, the reason I wanted to bring this to the attention of the Senate today is that it goes to the complete lack of transparency and accountability and the unwillingness to furnish all of the information that the Senate needs for the whole process of the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. The issue as to when the department became aware is quite a critical one, because, if the department in fact hadn't known—and it seems that they did not know of the letters between the Minister for Sport and the Prime Minister seeking an expansion of funding—it actually goes very much to the whole point that we have been making about this sports rorts program. Our point is that this was not a standard budget process, and the decision to expand the program and to change who was receiving grants from the recipients that had been recommended by Sport Australia was a political process.

The Prime Minister has claimed, during the whole 12 months that we have been focused on sports rorts, that the decision to expand the program from $30 million to $100 million was a standard budget process. If that were the case then surely the letters would actually have shown up in the Parliamentary Document Management System with dates, and the department would have known about them. They would have responded to those letters. But the fact that the department didn't appear to know about the letters, which we need to have confirmed, explains why the department only learnt about the letters more than a year later, during the Gaetjens review. That was the review into all of the pork-barrelling that occurred to help the government win the election. It appears that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet only learnt about the letters during that review. It's worth noting that the Gaetjens review was the sole examination of this issue by the government. But, from what they told us in estimates—and it appears that we don't know whether it's accurate or not, because I haven't had the response to this question on notice—it looks like they didn't have the letters when the exchange occurred, because it was a political process.

The increase in funding approved by the Prime Minister was a political decision based on the number of projects in marginal and targeted seats that could be funded in the months leading up to the 2019 election. It's now more than a year since the Audit Office released their report on the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program—more than a year that this Senate has been trying to piece together all the bits of information to find out exactly what went on. It's more than a year since we woke up to the news and were horrified to hear that the government had taken a community sports program with applications from hundreds of community sports groups and turned it into a political rort that was being run out of the Prime Minister's office.

There have been umpteen questions over that whole year that have not been answered. The government and the Liberal Party have been trying to hold things up and slow things down—refusing to provide key documents to the Senate select committee. Not answering this question today is just another one of the questions that haven't been answered. We haven't had meaningful answers to my other questions about the meeting between the Prime Minister and former Minister McKenzie in November 2018, when the funding was expanded. I asked questions just last Friday of former Minister McKenzie about the relationship between her office and the Prime Minister's office and the involvement of the Prime Minister's office, and I got unbelievable answers from Minister McKenzie.

The evidence that we do have—that we need to have ratified; we need to have the corroborating evidence that we know that the government is withholding from us—is clear evidence that the Prime Minister actually did know about the use of the marginal and targeted electorates before the first grants went out the door, and that in the Prime Minister's meeting with Senator McKenzie about expanding funding for the program a key part of the pitch from Senator McKenzie was how many grants could go to marginal and targeted electorates. We also know that the Prime Minister was closely involved in the decision-making for the program. We know that there were hundreds of emails and copies of spreadsheets that went backwards and forwards with changes to which community clubs were going to be funded. And we know that the Prime Minister's office was coordinating across multiple programs, because, in fact, the rorts don't stop at the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program. Instead, there were projects that were being identified by Liberal Party campaign headquarters, and they were trying to work out which programs they could jam them into—whether it was the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program or whether it was the Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream Program. Where could they get the money from in order to fund the projects that they thought were going to be of political benefit for them? They were coordinating between multiple offices to make sure that their election wish lists were being funded by taxpayer funds.

But, despite this clear evidence that the Prime Minister knew about the use of marginal and targeted electorates, and despite the evidence we have that his office was intimately involved in decision-making, we have yet to see any accountability from the Prime Minister or his office. The Gaetjens report was basically a cover-up report, commissioned by a former Liberal chief of staff, and it didn't even cover the Prime Minister's role or the role of his office. Instead, they found a technicality to force former Minister McKenzie out as a scapegoat, without looking at the role that the Prime Minister played.

We've also learnt over the last year that an independent statutory agency, the Australian Sports Commission, is being forced to clear their answers to questions from this parliament through the office of the current sports minister. Given how wide this rort goes, it seems incredible that the Liberals are trying to undermine the independence of a statutory body as part of their cover-up. But, instead of facing up to their failures, instead of coming clean, instead of giving answers to all the questions that we've asked—instead of doing that—they've doubled down on their cover-up and they've made Senator McKenzie the scapegoat for their failures.

The fact that they have made Senator McKenzie suffer for a rort that was overseen by the Prime Minister's office actually goes to the sexism that is inherent in the Liberal Party, and it shows how desperate they are to avoid linking the whole sports rorts affair to the Prime Minister. Senator McKenzie is a hardworking and passionate politician. She and I disagree on a lot of things, particularly about what we should do about Australia's forests, but I think it's fundamentally unfair to her that the Prime Minister has made her take the fall for a program that has his fingerprints all over it. We have so many other scandals that this government has been embroiled in during this term of office.

We had Minister Dutton embroiled in getting visas for au pairs; more recently, we've seen Minister Dutton embroiled in his own grants program rort. We had Minister Tudge delay the release of an asylum seeker. A Federal Court judge found that Minister Tudge engaged in criminal conduct that was 'disgraceful'. Minister Robert was one of several ministers who oversaw the debacle that was robodebt. Minister Sukkar was caught up in really serious questions about branch stacking. Then, of course, we had Minister Taylor—who's been in more scandals than I can even remember and certainly than I have time to mention—providing doctored documents to journalists, and the grassland scandal, to name a few. But all of these ministers have survived. There is a common theme through this. If you're a man in the Liberal Party, you can expect to experience a major scandal, and the Prime Minister will cover for you. But, if you're a woman who can be made to take the fall for the Prime Minister, he'll force you to resign and pretend it was over the membership of a shooting club.

Senator McKenzie's got my sympathy. She and I disagree on a lot of things, but I think she's had a pretty rough go from the Prime Minister, and she deserves better from him than to be made the scapegoat for a program that has got his fingerprints all over it. Again, we don't have all the information; the information is being withheld from this Senate. But it's particularly concerning that the evidence suggests that it might have been the Prime Minister's office that asked McKenzie's office to get the electorate data and analyse it. We don't have the full email from the documents, but it's entirely possible, given the discomfort from McKenzie's staff, that there was pressure on them from the Prime Minister's office to source the electorate data that underpinned the whole sports rorts scandal and apply their marginal seats strategy. If so, it's especially tragic that former Minister McKenzie has been made to take the fall for a rort that was forced onto her by the Prime Minister.

I look forward to getting an answer to my question today. But there are some other answers that we require as well. There are steps that the Prime Minister must take to make this right with Australians. There's a long list of documents that need to be provided to this Senate and to the Australian public, which include the full and unredacted Gaetjens report, the legal advice as to whether former Minister McKenzie actually had the authority to be the decision-maker about this sports rorts program, the talking points prepared by Minister McKenzie's office ahead of her meeting with the Prime Minister, and the multiple letters between Minister McKenzie and the Prime Minister in relation to this program.

This is the transparency that we need. We need answers to all of these things and to unanswered questions on notice. More importantly, the Prime Minister should apologise to the Australian people and specifically to the sports clubs that missed out. We expect more from our leaders, and the Australian people deserve more. To add to that apology, the government should immediately fund those clubs that missed out, that put in their hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in preparing their applications. They are clubs that should be funded, but they have been rorted.

We've got the level playing field bill before the Senate, which could be debated today, and the government should support it. More importantly, so that the cover-up, the lack of transparency and the rorting don't continue, what we need to have in this place and what we need to have support for from all sides of parliament is a federal independent commission against corruption, with teeth. Again, because of the work of the Greens, a Greens bill passed this Senate. It's ready to be voted on today in the other place. The Liberals could make a real difference to transparency; they could stop hiding behind unanswered questions and unreleased documents and make a real difference to accountability. We urge them to support our bill, or a bill that's equally as strong, for a federal ICAC with teeth. When you're talking about an unanswered question on notice, it's easy to forget that the whole issue of the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability has consequences; it matters. It has impacts on everyday Australians. That's why I am keeping on about this a year later.

In the case of sports rorts, what this corrupted grants process resulted in was that organisations who should have received funding missed out, while other projects were funded not on their merits but because the government thought it would help their chances of winning those targeted or marginal electorates if they were able to fund those organisations and then those organisations were able to crow about the government doing so.

I call on the government to come clean and stop covering up, to support ordinary Australians and to support the clubs that missed out, because the people of Australia deserve better. The people of Australia deserve better than the scapegoating of the women around you, Prime Minister, and your refusal to take responsibility. We ask the Prime Minister to answer the outstanding questions, apologise and do the right thing.