Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, four out of 100. I guess you would have got that for spelling your name correctly on the application. Unless there were other factors that came into it, you would mostly likely expect those clubs with the best results would be the most deserving of the $100 million. But, no, that wasn't what happened. The government kept saying, 'Look, we don't want women changing behind the sheds anymore; we want them changing in decent club rooms.' That's a very good objective, but 12 clubs who scored highly in this application process were denied the money. And where did it go? It went to the marginal seats that the government was looking to win at the last election.

Senator Waters talks about a federal ICAC. The fact of the matter is we have our very own Auditor-General. We didn't have an ICAC on this occasion, but the Auditor-General worked out that something dodgy—something really dodgy—went on here and he produced his report.

Now we come to sports rorts 2: $150 million, so another $50 million. Again, it's this breach of trust. The Prime Minister says to the Australian people: 'Look, more women are participating in sport than ever before. These sporting clubs, they often run on the smell of an oily rag'—and that's another point: volunteers spent hours and hours and hours preparing these applications, thinking it was on the level, thinking that they could trust the government. So what do we find with this $150 million, what's described as 'sports rorts on steroids'? The Prime Minister goes out a couple of weeks out from the election—it's a front-page splash in every newspaper in every town in the country—and says: 'We're going to put some money into women's sporting facilities. The number of women playing sport is increasing. They've got substandard facilities. We're going to improve those facilities with this $150 million.' Is that what happened? What the Prime Minister told us was going to happen, did that happen? No, it didn't. Forty per cent of the money went to two swimming pools. One was in a marginal seat in your home state, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, and guess what? It was in the marginal seat held by the Attorney-General. The other one was in the seat of Corangamite—another marginal seat.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Yes, Corangamite! So all this money that the government said was going to go towards improving sporting conditions for women in Australia—it's a good thing that they want to play; it's a good thing there are more of them who want to go out there—didn't happen. They didn't get the money, and they were never going to get the money.

All of these clubs around the countryside thought: 'Okay, we've missed out on the $100 million in the first round. Ah, but here is another $150 million and we'll have a chance of getting that money.' They never had a chance. This government was never ever going to fairly distribute that money. They were especially never going to fairly distribute it to the women's clubs that really needed that money. How do I know that? Well, 12 clubs that scored highly in the first application and could have been the beneficiaries of a second round didn't win in the first round and they were nowhere to be seen in the second round. This government has no accountability and no transparency.

As I said when I started my address in respect of this, this is an unprecedented step. We shouldn't have to do this. The ABC's got the document. What did the minister do when he found out that the ABC had it? Did he come to the parliament and say, 'Here's the document. Everybody can see what we've done here'? No. What did he do? He started an inquiry, a witch-hunt, in his own department, the Sport Australia department; he started a witch-hunt in the Department of Health to find out who gave the document to the ABC. Instead of saying, 'Okay, the game's up. Somebody's got this document. The Australian people are entitled to know what's gone on here. I'm going to present this document to the parliament,' what did the minister do? He started a witch-hunt in his own department, which I suspect is still ongoing. We'll find out a bit more about that in estimates. One of these days we're going to get the full story. The government can't keep this under wraps.