Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Pearce for her question. She's right. Last week the Australian National Audit Office report into the Morrison government's community health and hospitals fund was tabled in this parliament. It's the latest in a long line of scandals around programs run by the former government that breached the most basic principles of public administration.

This program allocated $2 billion of taxpayer funds to more than 170 projects. Mostly, there was no process seeking expressions of interest or making a formal assessment of the suitability of those projects. Indeed, the Audit Office found that 'the department was forced to monitor the media to know which projects had been selected'. Of the 63 major projects funded, the Audit Office found that only two were rated as highly suitable—only two out of 63. The Audit Office found that the administration of more than 100 grants under the program was 'not appropriate and involved deliberate breaches of the relevant legal instruments'.

One of those grants was to the now infamous Esther Foundation in Western Australia—a foundation that former Prime Minister Morrison gushed had 'completely, completely captured' his heart, but which has been the subject of complaints of psychological and emotional abuse, among other things, to WA health authorities dating back to 2018.

See this speech in context