Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Far bit for me to give advice to my political opponents, but I think they need to start any speech in this place with the following rhetorical flourish: 'Friends, rorters, countrymen: lend me taxpayers dollars.' That's the only way any coalition MP talking about grants given under sports rorts, road rorts, regional job rorts or pool rorts should be speaking in this place.

Realise this: this sports rorts affair will not and cannot go away until those who use taxpayer dollars as a campaign tool are held to account. That includes the Prime Minister, who stood in this place and elsewhere claiming innocence, when it's clear that 136 emails between his office and the former sports minister's office show he was up to his neck in this. There was a plethora of colour coded spreadsheets. This is ScoMo and his technicolour coat of rorts—less Prime Minister, more 'Prime Rorter'—who threw Bridget McKenzie under the bus but won't be held to account himself. It's time to fess up, to be held to account on behalf of all those mums and dads who put in hours and hours of time applying for a grants program where they were never in with a chance to get that money because they were ripped off by the coalition who were using it as a campaign tool to win the last election. It's wrong! (Time expired)