Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate the support of the opposition for the objectives of Senator Rice in this regard. We've worked very closely with the Greens on the so-called sports rorts grants scheme. I'd like to reiterate what Senator Rice summarised very accurately. This was an example of a government who started out by saying: 'We need to spend all of this money in sports. We need to have a set of criteria that sporting clubs around this country can look at and they can make an assessment about whether they meet the criteria. If they do, then they can put in an application.' The assumption always was, by every sporting club that I have had the pleasure to have discussed this issue with, that this system was on the level, that, if you put in an application, it would be judged on its merits and, if the merits justified it, then you would get a grant in accordance with what you were seeking. That was the whole assumption of this program.

The government went to the election, and the program was very well taken up, because this government had spent very little on infrastructure in community sporting places. But the assumption was, if you had a good application, it would be assessed fairly by the relevant independent public servants, and you would then be awarded a grant based on merit. That's what happened to start with. Sport Australia assessed these programs against a set of criteria. Often the criteria related to female sporting requirements, because there has been a boom—whether you're talking about Aussie Rules, football, cricket, rugby league or rugby union—in female sport participation in this country, and sporting clubs just hadn't managed to catch up. The government latched onto this. The government saw that there was a problem and led people to believe that, if they put in a genuine application, that application would be judged on its merits.

But, of course, that isn't what happened. The exact opposite of that is what happened. The government and the minister at the time took these applications, completely ignored the categories and the classifications that Sport Australia had attributed to these and replaced them, in the lead-up to the election, with grants that went to the most vulnerable government seats or seats that the government was trying to win off either Labor or an Independent. So they were specifically targeted. This was pork-barrelling on an industrial scale. We'd never, ever seen this sort of pork-barrelling in this country. A whole lot of things happened about 12 months ago as a result of this.

Of course, the minister at the time, Senator McKenzie, who was, I'd say, the fall guy—I suppose she was 'the fall woman'—lost her spot in the ministry, not for the industrial-scale pork-barrelling, you might remember, Madam Deputy President, but for a minor technicality, which was that she had not declared that she was a member of a club to which she'd given a grant. Of all the breaches of integrity that took place during that time, that was the smallest, and she took the fall.

Senator McKenzie had an opportunity last week to set the record straight. She had the opportunity to explain to the Australian people exactly what happened in the interactions between her office and the Prime Minister's office. Senator McKenzie had the opportunity to make it clear, I think, that the Prime Minister's office was up to its neck in the allocation of the grants under this program. I know you're surprised, Madam Deputy President, and I know it comes as a shock that this Prime Minister could be engaged in that sort of activity, but there is no other conclusion that you can reach. If Senator McKenzie, and I believe her, says, 'I didn't rort the system. It wasn't me who was making all these decisions in respect of grants,' then who was it? All the emails are gradually dribbling out, bit by bit, and, if the government responds appropriately to Senator Rice's application for the answer to that question on notice, we'll get some more information—because we're not going to give up on this. The Australian people deserve to know what went on and what went wrong.

We've now seen it in a whole lot of other grant programs. It's starting to look systemic. Again, Madam Deputy President, I know you'll be shocked that this government would engage in that sort of systemic rorting of grant programs in this country, but we're now seeing it in a whole lot of other programs. But it all started with the so-called sports rorts affair, and we need to get to the bottom of it. The government has to come clean. In particular, the Prime Minister's office has to come clean and say what their role was in this process. We've heard all about the colour coding. Minister McKenzie says there were a whole lot of colour-coding documents, and I believe it's true. The head of the ANAO, Mr Brian Boyd, has done a terrific job, I might add—forensic in a way you don't often see. He has tracked down, bit by bit, inch by inch, all of the industrial-scale pork-barrelling by this government that went on. But we haven't got to the bottom of it yet. But we will. We will. We're not giving up.

The government thinks that the pandemic will overshadow all of these things, but, sooner or later, the pandemic will pass, Senator Abetz. You know that. I can see you smiling because you know what I'm saying is exactly right. The pandemic will pass, and the Australian people will come back to demanding what is their right, and their right in these circumstances is to know what went on—how it is that the Prime Minister of this country was able to rort this program in such a way that the funding which should have gone to clubs that genuinely deserved to be rewarded because of the projects that they were putting forward, because of the efforts of all of their volunteers, didn't go to them. Don't forget, Madam Deputy President, that most of the people who worked in these clubs whose projects scored highly were volunteers who'd spent their nights and weekends preparing their applications for these generous grants—hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money—to make sure that they put the best possible foot forward. Imagine how cheated they felt after they discovered that they had scored highly, 90 or 95—good projects.

I can give you an example of one project in my home state of South Australia: the South Adelaide Football Club. It is a fine club, one of the early SANFL clubs in South Australia and an early adopter of female sports participation in South Australia. You'll know, Deputy President, how successful the Adelaide Crows football team have been at the national level, in the AFL. They won two of their first three premierships. Of course, the South Adelaide Football Club was a feeder into the Adelaide Crows football team. They've had a long history of being a terrific SANFL club. I remember I went to the 1964 grand final, which was the last time they won a grand final. There was a very big crowd. There were 74,000 people there. They say a big crowd at Adelaide Oval, Senator Ayres, is 54, but in 1964 there were 74,000 people at that match. Neil Kerley had switched from West Adelaide to South Adelaide and took them from bottom to top.

Now, this is a football team in Adelaide with a great history. It was an early adopter of women's AFL in South Australia. They put in an application. Listen to this, Deputy President: they had fewer female toilets than they'd had grand finals in their women's football. I'll say that again, Senator Ayres, because it takes a bit of listening to. They had fewer female toilets than they had premierships. Can you believe it? So they put in an application, expecting—