Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Last week the ANAO report revealed that the Morrison government acted unethically and unlawfully in administering the $2 billion CHHP grant scheme. Your government has repeatedly condemned the Morrison government's heinous pork-barrelling. Are you open to structural changes, such as legislating spending on large grant programs, to stop this from ever happening again?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kooyong for her question. One of the key features of our much more responsible approach to managing the budget is to make sure that we get value for money when we allocate public money, whether it's via grants or in other ways. The honourable member raised in her question the Community Health and Hospitals Program, a $2 billion fund which attracted a fair bit of criticism from the Audit Office. My colleague, the Minister for Health, has now addressed that on a couple of occasions, and I know that in the aftermath of that Audit Office report—in light of it—he has asked for more work to be done to make sure that we don't have a repeat of that kind of situation.

I also know that my terrific colleague the finance minister is doing a heap of work to take into consideration the advice that has been provided via recommendations from the Public Accounts and Audit Joint Committee's report on The administration of government grants, as well as the Audit Office report Award of funding under the Building Better Regions Fund. The Minister for Finance has asked her department for advice on the most robust way to provide these kinds of grants from the budget into communities right around Australia, and I think that's appropriate.

I also know, via our work on the Expenditure Review Committee and in other ways, that a number of colleagues in the cabinet and in the ministry are doing the necessary work to make sure we do things differently to our predecessors—that we do have a much more robust case when it comes to allocating public money and that we're getting value for money when we make those decisions. That is an important part of the work that we have been doing for the best part of a year now, and there will be more work to do on that front as well, whether it's considering some of the proposals that are put to us in good faith, to make sure that this is robust.

I'll finish on this point, Mr Speaker: one of the reasons this country didn't have enough to show for a trillion dollars in debt is the approach of those opposite. The party that used to be born to rule became born to rort, and that's why it has taken us, and is taking us, the necessary time to clean up the mess that they left behind. That applies to the provision of grants in the same way that it applies to other aspects of our responsible economic management.