Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It seems to me that the argument the government were trying to make during question time today and in the contributions after question time is that we should thank them for rorting this program—that we should be grateful that they used a colour-coded spreadsheet to rort what should have been a merit based program. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, because maybe they don't understand how this program was meant to work. This program was meant to be the granting of applications by an independent agency based on merit. The ANAO report found that merit wasn't taken into account and the program guidelines were not followed. So you can cherrypick what paragraphs you want from that report, but the findings of the report are very clear: merit was not taken into account and the program guidelines were not followed.

Why is that important? It's important because mums, dads and volunteers of sporting clubs spent their time putting grant applications together. They spent hours and hours putting grant applications together and put them in thinking that they were going to be judged on merit, but they weren't. They thought that the program was merit based, but really the government had a colour-coded spreadsheet. Why did the ANAO report come back with that finding? Sport Australia provided recommendations based on merit and grant criteria, but, instead of following the recommendations, the government created a spreadsheet and colour-coded that spreadsheet based on political parties and electorates. That is how they decided who deserved a grant: whether or not it would help them win a seat.

This political interference was so blatant that Sport Australia actually had to warn the minister that her interference was compromising its independence. The government were so blatant that they handed out novelty cheques and had candidates making funding announcements. They didn't even tell the local MPs that the funding announcement was going to be made, and they even made sure that they had a spreadsheet with the electorates that they were targeting colour-coded so they could make sure that merit was not going to be taken into account when these grants were given out. But the government have not and will not apologise to the clubs who missed out on this funding, and we know why that is—it's because this went right to the very top.

Now, some of them are trying to backtrack a little and distance themselves. We noticed that Minister Payne wouldn't come clean about her involvement in this scandal, but we've also got the new Nationals deputy leader, the member for Maranoa, admitting that this was a partisan process, and their local members are also backtracking as well. The member for Leichhardt boasted about working to secure a grant for a club in his electorate, but then later backtracked and said that he played absolutely no role in obtaining the grant. They want to distance themselves. If anything, they want to put all the blame on the former Deputy Leader of the Nationals. They want her to hang for this, but everything else is fine. But they can't and won't apologise because leaked emails show that the Prime Minister was looking over the colour-coded spreadsheet and making decisions, leading to an adjustment of funding.

That's what that email said: that the funding needed to be adjusted. They were part of the decision-making.

Finally, I just want to clear up the issue around the women's change rooms. The Prime Minister has said that the reason that he was involved in this program was that he wanted to ensure that girls didn't have to change out the back of the shed. But we know that 12 grants for female change rooms were rejected by this politicised process. One of those applications came from the Innisfail Brothers Leagues Club, where women have been forced to change in tents after this government rejected their application for funding for women's change rooms. And do you know why it was rejected? Because it wasn't in a target seat. It wasn't going to win this government an election, so it was ignored. Hundreds of clubs around Australia, run by volunteers, thought that if they had a go, they would get a go. How wrong they were! This government dudded them. They made sure that clubs weren't going to get the funding unless there was a pay-off for the government. Labor will not be thanking the government for this process, because that's not how they should be doing business. 'The report says what it says'—what a terrible excuse. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.