Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to call out the egregious revelations over the last few weeks regarding the previous government's industrial-scale rorting of grants. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, we are only partway through an audit committee inquiry into grants administration. As the chair, I'm not going to pre-empt the recommendations—the member for Dunkley here has bearing witness to this nonsense that keeps emerging—but I do want to highlight the evidence.

Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars were treated as a Liberal Party slush fund. Billions of dollars with no guidelines, allocated with no proper process but with secret decisions and secret criteria, and no records kept as to why decisions were made. I'm not contesting the right of ministers to make these decisions, but they are subject to the Financial Management Act, and they are subject to the grants guidelines. They say that ministers must receive written advice before making a decision, and they have to record the basis for their decisions. But the upshot is that billions of dollars were rorted for the Liberal Party.

The most depressing thing, though, is that no-one is surprised by this anymore. That's a shameful and shocking thing our country. The second most depressing thing is they still don't understand that what they did was fundamentally wrong. They just come up with lines like: 'Oh well. You're the government now. Move on.' We have to interrogate this, and we have to learn the lessons.

I will give you the example of the $4.8 billion Urban Congestion Fund: 83 per cent of funding from this just happened to go to Liberal and National electorates. It's a Deirdre Chambers moment. It's just a coincidence that there's only congestion in Liberal and National electorates. I don't think congestion only happens in their seats. It included, of course, the infamous commuter car parks rorts, a $656 million slush fund. Sixty per cent of that went to Victoria; apparently you didn't need commuter car parks in New South Wales or Brisbane or other states. The interesting thing in the audit report we have been inquiring into is that the department did some modelling and found out that most congestion in Melbourne—even if you just want to say, 'We were pushing the funding into Melbourne because Josh Frydenberg was worried about his seat,' and it turned out he was right on that front—is in the north-west of Melbourne, yet all the commuter car park funding went to the south-east. That's not a coincidence; that's where the seats that they were worried about were. But there was no process. They didn't write to state and territory governments who run the transport infrastructure. They didn't write to councils. It was just made up by Liberal MPs. Many were in Josh Frydenberg's electorate of Kooyong.

Speaking of Kooyong, it is more than car parks now. You'd think the big national projects were going to be funded by the $4.8 billion Urban Congestion Fund. You were the minister at one point, weren't you?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was a good minister!

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right, a very good minister—one that locked himself in rooms with no recommendations from public servants and wrote no records that the taxpayers—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How would you know?

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm chair of the audit committee. That's how I know. Because I've read the audit reports and we've had your evidence in. There are no records kept of why you locked yourself in a room and made these decisions. Billions of dollars of taxpayer funding. The former Deputy Prime Minister—he was former Deputy Prime Minister once, in the middle of the Barnaby episodes.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's more than you'll ever be.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This project on the books in the electorate of Kooyong was traffic lights, as I said.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You will never be the Deputy Prime Minister of this country.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He never will be the Deputy Prime Minister of this country.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You'll never be the Deputy Prime Minister of the country again. You'd reckon that the Urban Congestion Fund might be for big, national—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You'll never be in the first place.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They do shriek, don't they? When you talk about integrity in public administration, it sets them off. They just kind of yell and scream—exactly what I said. I think it proves my point earlier that they still don't get that how they administered these funds was fundamentally wrong. It was legally wrong and it was ethically wrong.

A $4.8 billion fund: it's funding a set of traffic lights at the intersection of Camberwell Road with Redfern Road and Monteath Avenue.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ooh, that's important!

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're two small side-streets, Member for Dunkley. The road is a state road, but it runs through some shops in Kooyong, one lane each way and on-street parking—a big national priority, this one. It's two side-streets of residential streets, just to make it clear. It was announced in 2019 that the then government was going to give $1.8 million in funding for this set of pedestrian lights. It was such an important national priority that they were going to fund 100 per cent it from their slush fund. They budgeted $1.6 million in the 2019-20 budget. No-one ever answered the question as to where the other $200,000 went, but let's not argue about that. The tender was out this year—$3.6 million. It's doubled. It's just a coincidence, I'm sure, that it's the intersection outside Josh Frydenberg's former electorate office, isn't it? This is how they used taxpayer money: handing out money and favours to their mates and then to themselves outside their own electorate offices.

You would think also that for a national program of this scale there would be some independent assessment of proposals, maybe. There's a thought! A fact: just two of the projects out of the hundreds in the spreadsheets that we've got were referred to Infrastructure Australia for assessment: the Napoleon Road upgrade and the Dorset Road upgrade. What did Infrastructure Australia say about those? I've got the business case evaluation summaries here. They said: 'Not recommended for the infrastructure priority list.' That's what they said. Would you like me to table them? Deputy Speaker Wilkie, can I seek leave to table these documents?

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes? No?

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. I didn't think they'd want those on the record. Let's make clear—

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They don't want these facts on the parliamentary record. Infrastructure Australia said they were not recommended for the infrastructure priority list. For Napoleon Road, they initially allocated $3.5 million towards the upgrade. Then Alan Tudge, the former member—this is one of those ones in Aston—said they were going to fund $50 million. Yet that's actually $220 million short of what would have been required to deliver the project. So they allocated $3½ million, they announced a fake promise of $50 million and they were going to need $270 million to deliver the project. Then there's the Dorset Road upgrade. They allocated $6.5 million. Tudge looks like he promised $80 million, although the department said, no, they actually only pencilled in $50 million. But it would require another $120 million to deliver the project. Fake promises. Even the ones they put through Infrastructure Australia were not recommended.

How were the $4.8 billion of projects chosen, you may well ask. No-one will ever know. The department gave evidence on Friday that they had no idea. It was done by ministers. Only some states and territories got asked—like New South Wales, a Liberal state. Other states and territories didn't get asked for input or advice.

Then there's the Regional Growth Fund, a $272.2 million slush fund. Full marks for trying, though. You did try and cover your tracks on this one. It was dressed up. They had process, they had guidelines and they had evaluations, but magically, 96 per cent went to coalition seats. The other four per cent went to Lingiari, a seat you were trying to win from us. You didn't win it. But magically, in another Deirdre Chambers moment, $261,181,392 versus $11 million—they say the department assessed it. Well, yes, the department did assess these and then it gave a list of 148 applications to the ministers and said, 'You choose.' Why did they choose one over the other? No-one will ever know. It's just a coincidence that 96 per cent of it went to Liberal seats. The fund was for major transformational projects to deliver long-term economic growth and create jobs in the regions. There were a whole lot of sporting facilities. There was even one in the Casey electorate, on the edge of Melbourne. In fact, most of the voters in Casey live in a metropolitan area. Some of the funding went into a metropolitan area, but that should not be a surprise, because, as the Auditor-General observed, over 3½ years, 26 per cent of their so-called regional development funding went to major capital city postcodes.

A government member interjecting—

You're right, most of that you couldn't apply for, like the infamous North Sydney pool—apparently a regional development project. There was no requirement for benefit-cost ratios on this. The committee got the documents. It was a slush fund dressed up as a grants program. This cannot be normalised.

I'll close by reading a couple of quotes from submissions. Regional Development Australia Northern Territory said:

… BBRF became increasingly known for being a funding program marred by political influence.

A long-term government worker, now consultant, said:

The real point is that the last few years of the previous government was void of policy across almost every area of government. In my 43 years of working across 3 levels of government I had not before seen such a lack of policy depth across an entire government.

…   …   …

The sad side was that we didn't even try for Australian Government funding as the town is in the wrong location in the wrong electorate. How sad that in Australia, over the last few years, the location politically determines if children can have facilities … they also don't have the guts to stand up in front of the children and say because your town didn't vote for us, you are not getting a playground.

Shame on you. (Time expired)