Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Tyrrell, I move:

That the Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Amendment (Prime Minister and Cabinet's Portfolio Measures No. 2) Regulations 2022, made under the Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Act 1997, be disallowed [F2022L00240].

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has come on in rather a hurry. I know Senator Tyrrell may wish to come down and speak to it. If she does, it's important she be given the opportunity to come down and speak to it.

I rise to associate the Greens with the disallowance motion put on by Senator Tyrrell to disallow the Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Amendment (Prime Minister and Cabinet's Portfolio Measures No. 2) Regulations 2022. It has a very innocuous, almost deliberately Orwellian title. It's the regulation under which there's a sweetheart deal to deliver millions of dollars to the pet charity of the Governor-General that was cooked up between the former Prime Minister and the Governor-General over a series of fireside chats. The Labor government have said they're going to pull the funding. That's good. We support the decision. In fact, we celebrate the decision. We were pushing for the pulling of the funding.

If this is a project that has merit, then it should go through the usual procedures to have it assessed as a meritorious project and go through the usual transparency procedures for a grant. But, as the statement that came with the financial framework regulations made clear, this was a grant that managed to avoid all the usual scrutiny processes. It wasn't put up on the website. There was no competitive tendering. It was $18 million of public money being handed over to a charity which was being lobbied for by the Governor-General behind closed doors.

It was good to see the new government say they're not going to proceed with the funding. We support them saying they're not going to proceed with the funding. Indeed, it's something the Greens and my office had been calling for, for some considerable time. The Senate will recall that, on behalf of the Greens, I put forward a similar disallowance motion to that that's been put forward here by Senator Tyrrell. We agreed, for the tidiness of the Senate, to withdraw our motion and associate ourselves with Senator Tyrrell's motion, which has now come on.

We say to the Labor government: the decision has been made to pull the funding—tick. Let's now scrub the offensive regs from the statute books—the regs that allowed for the delivery of this big chunk of public money without any scrutiny, without even being put on the website let alone allowing competitive tendering. If this leadership charity—I suppose it's called a charity—or this leadership proposal has merit, go through the usual process. Have competitive tendering. Have a proper public assessment of it. If it stacks up and it's better to spend $18 million here than $18 million on other critical projects—and I can think of about 500 that I'd put before spending money on this particular project—then by all means fund it.

In the meantime, this motion is doing the people of Australia a great service. It's scrubbing off some unnecessary laws. We make a lot of laws, and we could just scrub off this one, which is not only unnecessary but, if it's allowed to remain on the statute books, would still allow the government to reverse its decision and put the funding through without any kind of scrutiny or that necessary daylight that all grants should go through. For those reasons, we associate ourselves with the motion, commend Senator Tyrrell for bringing it to the Senate and look forward to the government supporting it.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll put the government's position very briefly. The government is not proceeding with the 2022-23 budget measure regarding the Australian Future Leaders Program. Funding for this measure, along with a number of other measures announced by the previous government, has been reviewed as part of the Albanese government's budget preparations. We will support the disallowance. It's actually, practically, no longer needed given we will not be funding this program.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I want to thank Labor for doing this and cleaning up what they do. Once we all investigated and the media investigated—I'm sorry, I can't remember the journalist who brought this out into the open, but I thank her, to start with. While we also want to thank Labor, I think what we want to do is make sure it's completely cleaned up so it doesn't happen again.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're scrapping it.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. We just want to make sure it's finished. It's been really disappointing from the blue side here when they were in government. Whatever little deal was done between the Governor-General and the Prime Minister of the day is absolutely disgraceful. There is no information on it. We have no idea where this money was being spent. It was like a little boys' club gone wrong. It was disgraceful—like $18 million is $18 worth of mixed lollies. Fair dinkum! This has been absolutely disgraceful in the way it was done.

We don't just hand out money without any details because they're the Governor-General. I still for the life of me have not heard much out of the Governor-General explaining what this—what do they call it?—future leaders blah blah blah program was all about. It's without any detail, and yet the Governor-General is still sitting there in his position, happy to take 18 million bucks, to not be transparent with the public out there and to tell them exactly how great this program was going to be, because for $18 million he was going to get a great program. There was no doubt about that, apparently.

We haven't heard boo. I have to say that's been quite shameful. That in itself shows it's probably time the Governor-General went and had a look at his position in front of the public eye. Once again: if you have full detail, mate, of what this program looked like, then you come out and tell us what it looked like. I haven't heard a peep out of you.

You realise now that you're not in the military. You're the Governor-General and you're in the face of the public of Australia. If you can't come out with good reasoning on that 18 million bucks and where it was going, and the little deals that were done on the sidelines, maybe you don't deserve to be in that position in the first place. You're not in the military, mate. There's no more cover-up here. It's a whole different ballgame being the Governor-General.

Quite frankly, you need to come out and be honest with the Australian people on what was going on. Like millions of others out there, I will not be satisfied until this is done. I'd love to know who the future leaders were going to be. Who are the future leaders you were going to pick in your own little sphere and put on another planet? Was it a miniature Australian Defence Force Academy or something? What did it look like? What was the substance to it?

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who signed off on the regs, by the way?

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, who signed off on the regs?

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Governor-General. That's a golden standard if ever you saw one.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's correct. I think for us it is about just having this cleaned up and finished off properly and making sure that there is a statement very loud and clear that I don't give a stuff if you're the Governor-General. And I mean that with due respect, but you're under the same public eye as the rest of us are up here. Welcome to the real world. The military will no longer be there to cover your bottom. It doesn't work like that.

Firstly, I ask you to go and think about your position and whether it's tenable, because I don't think it is and neither do millions of others out there, apparently, who are not that happy with you. I do ask the Governor-General, before I finish up, to go and have a good look at yourself, because it's absolutely unacceptable behaviour. There's nothing more you can say about that. Maybe it's time for you to leave.

Other than that, I would have thought that if the Future Leaders Program was going to be such an asset and the leaders were going to be so great, you'd have been out there prancing around like a butterfly about it, but we haven't heard a peep. I won't say anything else. I think we all know where we stand on that. We'd like to finish off and make sure it is done correctly. We want to make sure that this has been an example, and that we are not going to tolerate that sort of waste, let alone without any substance to where the $18 million, or millions of dollars, was going to go, into the future, that this is just not on.

I don't particularly want to be part of a Senate that just thinks 18 million bucks can be flagged around, as I said, like $18 worth of mixed lollies. It mightn't seem a lot of money when we're dealing with billions up here, but it is an absolute waste that had no substance to it whatsoever. I think that's more destroying than someone asking for some money, yet on the same note there's no instruction, there's no: what does it look like? There's absolutely nothing. I think that is shameful.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Shoebridge for getting things started in my absence. He did a great job, as always. I'm happy for him to step into my shoes any time.

I'm glad we have a chance now to disallow this regulation. I'm hoping we take full advantage of it because it's done. There are a number of reasons to disallow this regulation, and I'm happy for senators to take their pick of whichever one they like. We should disallow this regulation because it is not transparent. It was made through a one-off grant without a competitive tender. It's fair to ask: why? It's not like there was any track record it could point to that would suggest it was a safe bet for taxpayer money. The foundation was not operational before the grant was announced. It had no staff, no office, no website and no profile.

We'll never know the basis on which the decision to award this grant was made. We know it was hidden from public view. Grants normally get published on the government's online GrantConnect hub, and this one was not. The Governor-General was meeting with the former Prime Minister to lobby him over the project, or maybe he wasn't—it depends on who you ask. He says he wasn't lobbying for it and his office says he wasn't lobbying for it, but its director says he was meeting with the government over it. I don't know what to make of that. Let's just say it's not very transparent. Maybe you don't mind the transparency issue.

We should disallow this because it was a waste of money. This is not just my opinion. The Treasurer confirmed that the government had concluded that the $18 million initial grant and $4 million a year of ongoing funding didn't pass muster and did not represent value for money. So it doesn't pass muster and it doesn't represent value for money. We do not need to spend $30 million over the next four years setting up a program for rich kids to get told how to rule the world. Trust me, I know a few rich kids, and they don't need any help getting told how to rule the world. They feel very well equipped to do that without help. So it's an unnecessary and wasteful spend. Maybe that doesn't bother you either.

Finally, we should disallow this because it is weird. Even if you think this is a perfectly useful way to spend tens of millions of dollars of public money, this is a weird way to go about spending it. According to the ABC, the person pushing this sent emails saying the Prime Minister's office would own the project. Promotional material for the program boasts of support from organisations and individuals who apparently have nothing to do with it. The organisation was granted charity status, seemingly without doing anything. It listed a Barangaroo address as its registered office, but the address was a law firm. It's not transparent, it's not necessary and it's not normal. Nothing about this stacks up. Everything about this should go. I urge my colleagues to get rid of it by supporting this motion. It's good to see Labor scrapping the money. Let's disallow this because it's weird and it's dumb. Let's scrap it.

Question agreed to.