George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I do not have time in one minute to answer all four of those questions, so let me just address myself in the first instance to the third question, ‘Didn’t the Audit Office find that the government had been rorting the Volunteer Small Equipment Grants scheme?’ The answer to that question is no. If I may direct you, Senator Lundy, to the Audit Office report Distribution of funding for community grant programmesand I am indebted to Senator Scullion for drawing this to my attention—in paragraph 51, on page 28, the report concludes that one of the reasons that there were more applications for Volunteer Small Equipment Grants received from government electorates was that government members were more active than opposition members in encouraging organisations to apply for the grants.