Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The debate is about the alleged poor administration of the regional programs in Australia. It is worth noting that in 1996 following the election of the Howard government the whole of the Department of Regional Development was abolished. They just got rid of it—they did not want it, did not need it, just got rid of it.

It is also worth remembering that the programs that are being described by those opposite have been described variously as ‘wonderful community projects’—and there are many that are. They have been described as ‘rorts’ on our side—and many are. On radio not so long ago the leader of the National Party made the comment in Broken Hill that ‘this program was actually for small communities’. We have had speakers opposite describe these projects as not being ‘political footballs’. If this is about funding for small communities, I have a letter here from a company which thought they would be recipients of a substantial grant. The company wrote complaining that in fact they had not received the grant because we had said that they were not approved by the former government, that they did not get a contract. They said, ‘Your decision to deny us the grant will deny this company the large profits’—that they would have made—‘given the price of oil and fuel.’ It is not about small community projects. It is actually about rorts. It is actually about public administration. I am surprised that the opposition would raise the issue of the management of programs in regional Australia. To put it mildly, their record on regional programs is atrocious.

I have remarked before that the very first documentation that we got when the class of 2007 arrived in this place were the volumes of the ANAO report. There were three volumes on our desks for us to consider. The three volumes go into great detail about the maladministration of the Regional Partnerships program. The Australian National Audit Office, the independent watchdog overseeing the administration of taxpayers’ money, could not have been more scathing in its assessment of the running of Regional Partnerships. The ANAO’s damning report on Regional Partnerships is sobering advice on how not to administer a grants program, not just a regional grants program but a grants program.

In particular it showed how inconsistently those opposite had applied the program’s guidelines. They manipulated the program to an extent purely to meet short-term political needs and it would be almost impossible to establish what criteria a project was required to meet in order to obtain Commonwealth support. The definition of a regional project was whatever project was in a marginal seat which the then government sought to hold. Whether it was in a regional area or not was irrelevant, as the member for Wentworth is well aware. There are hundreds of needy communities each with very worthwhile projects that missed out because those opposite were only focused on their own electoral margins.

In reading the ANAO report it is apparent that ministers overruled departmental advice, project assessment and management advice and gave grants for no apparent reason other than the money would be spent in a coalition held seat. When I say ‘no apparent reason’ what I mean is there is no documentation on the file, no reference to why a particular piece of advice was thought to have been inappropriate. There is no documentation.

Of the 43 projects that were approved despite the department not recommending them, 38 were in coalition held seats. Of the 43 that were approved despite the department saying, ‘No, do not do this; this is not an appropriate use of public money,’ 38 of them were in coalition held seats. More than a third of the program’s money was pumped into just 10 rural coalition seats, including Gwydir, the seat of John Anderson, the minister formerly responsible for the Regional Partnerships program. Another $4.6 million was earmarked for 22 projects in the member for Lyne’s electorate, another former minister responsible for this program.

The previous government dragged its feet on the contracting of hundreds of grants, leaving many worthy projects hanging in uncertainty unnecessarily. More than 30 projects took between a year and 2½ years to contract. Let me explain what that means. It means that they were projects that received approval from the former government, and approval actually meant a media event, a photograph, a story in the local paper, frequently a deputy prime minister, most often another minister, but always a coalition candidate sometimes handing over what could reasonably have been thought to be a cheque to the recipient organisation that, not unreasonably, then believed a contract was in place. It was not unreasonable for them to believe that a deal had been made, a contract was in place, an obligation was there on the part of the Commonwealth to fund the project.

What did these organisations do? Most often they went out and started work. I have spoken to excellent community organisations, outstanding groupings of people who believed they had a contract. They believed that there was a deal between them and the Commonwealth. Sometimes the projects are sponsored by church groups. On some occasions the most significant event at the start of the project was to have the most significant person from the church, sometimes even a bishop, bless the laying of the cornerstone or the laying of the concrete slab, believing there was a contract in place with the former government.

When we talk about the grotesque abuse of public confidence, when we talk about rorts, there can be nothing more despicable than leading local church groups to believe there was a contract in place, an honourable process, and that the contract would be honoured. These groups—and members opposite know exactly who these groups are—went out, spent their own money that they had raised through lamington sales, through raffles and all kinds of other fundraising drives, through knitting, through running races, sporting and community events to raise money, and they did that believing they had a partnership. They had no such partnership. They were taken for granted. The grotesque rort is that it is left not to the former government; the grotesque part of the game was of course that it would be left to the new government to explain that there was no funding decision.

Let me tell you, when you turn up to these organisations—as those opposite do not—and explain exactly what went wrong this is what happens: they understand that they have been taken for a ride by those opposite. They understand that integrity in this process is on the side of those who speak to the actual fact pattern, who describe what happened, when and where, and who do not turn up wanting a mere media event, a photograph in the local paper, and expect to be delivered, for a bag of promises, a bag of votes. That is the equation that we were looking at here, not a bag of money. The poor community organisations believed it was a bag of money for a bag of votes; no, it was simply a bag of empty promises for which those opposite expected the votes of local communities. There can be nothing more grotesque, there can be nothing that goes more to the fundamental distrust of community organisations to those opposite, than that these arrangements fell through.

It is true that when we inherited this program we were shocked. We could not believe that organisations had been led like that. There were organisations in my own electorate where I had thought that the media event of the handing over of the cheque actually meant a contract was in place. I thought that. I genuinely thought that. I was taken in, and I am a politician. I am a person who has been a member of a political party for 32 years. I am a person who has been a national organiser and national official of the Labor Party. I was sucked in by what I thought was a public ceremony of some integrity. It was no such thing. It was a rort and is seen for what it was. (Time expired)

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