Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator, a list of the grants was shown to the Labor Party. I asked whether this list could be incorporated in Hansard. I made it clear that the list was prepared by my office. Once again, the Labor Party has refused to allow this information to be put on the public record. As I said, while the Howard government were being attacked for what was allegedly pork-barrelling, we did not know that the Labor Party were preparing the largest pork barrel in Australian history. I made the point that all we are doing is speaking about sporting grants. We are not speaking about the vast range of other grants that the Labor Party made in the course of the election. I think Minister Ellis has been put in a very difficult position. I believe her to be a conscientious minister, a minister who is seeking to work hard on behalf of the sporting community, and I make no attack on Minister Ellis in that regard. Minister Ellis has been asked by the machine men, by people in the PM’s office and presumably by people in Tanner’s office to attempt to cover up the vast range of pork-barrelling which occurred in the sporting area.

The Labor Party has a rather unfortunate history in this regard. Remember that then minister for sport, Ros Kelly, was sacked over what is now termed sports rorts 1. In its final phase, it totalled, I think, about $30 million. Contrast the $30 million that Ros Kelly was sacked for with this $100 million plus—and growing almost daily as we get new figures in to show the large scale of grants. It is not for me really to advise Minister Ellis, but my view would be this: Tanner and Albanese prepared a major pork-barrelling exercise. They should wear the odium of it. I do not think Minister Ellis should wear the odium of it. I do not think that the advisers to Minister Ellis are aware of just what powers this Senate has. I suspect they are expert in the ways of the other place—possibly some of them have come from state arenas—but they are now dealing with the Senate. The Senate has very extensive powers to obtain information and extensive powers to make sure that this is debated. Our procedures would allow this to be debated virtually every day in this chamber as the information came to hand.

I shall be leaving the Senate, so I shall not be leading that debate or taking part, but I suspect I am not letting any secrets out of the bag when I say that Senator Bernardi will be very active over the break. Senator Bernardi will be contacting a lot of organisations over the break. I can perhaps share with the Senate some of the methods that he will be using. He will be speaking to organisations close to those bodies which have received grants but did not receive grants themselves. I suspect that, over the next three months, a great deal more information will be obtained. I just want to state again what I believe is the best advice for Minister Ellis: simply table the list of grants which she has been asked to administer.

We are not interested, really, in the argument that these grants are going to be administered correctly, because we believe they will be. Any government would be foolish not to make sure that the grants were administered in an effective way. The big issue is this, and I think people have to understand it: a massive degree of pork-barrelling has occurred—