Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the explanation given—or, really, the excuse made by Minister Colbeck, because once again the dog ate his homework! He's got a very hungry dog it seems! They want more time to comply with this order to produce documents about sports rorts No. 2. Well, we saw with sports rorts No. 1 that they wanted more time and then the answer was, 'You can't have the documents,' anyway. So I fully expect that, when we come back to this place on the next sitting day, Monday the 24th, with this extra time we'll still see the same 'we're not going to give you these documents' explanation, because this government just does not understand that democracies and executive governments should operate with integrity, transparency and accountability.

So just when you thought it was safe to go and play sport again—no. You've had sports rorts 1; here is sports rorts 2. Nobody is safe. If you're in a marginal electorate, you will be accosted by a Liberal MP trying to keep his or her seat and forcing some money on you for facilities that your local council might not even want, as has been reported on at least two occasions.

This time around, in sports rorts 2, the main issue is: it's not like they ignored the guidelines like they did in sports rorts 1; this time around they didn't even have any guidelines. They simply issued invitations, they hand-picked who would get this money and they then announced that before the election. I think sports rorts 2 is more egregious than sports rorts 1 because they didn't even have the decency to seek to develop guidelines for how to spend public money. This was an even more blatant rort than sports rorts No. 1. This government just continues to find new lows.

So there were no guidelines at all to be ignored, which is why we've asked for these documents today. We want to know if the department said: 'Guys, you really should have some guidelines. This is public money. These are not your personal funds to dispense in marginal seats to shore up your own power.' Naturally, they don't want to give us those documents. I fully expect that the Public Service would have done their job and advised that there should have been guidelines to disburse public money. We'll wait until Monday the 24th to be told that we can't have those documents.

This was invite only. The government said, 'We'd like you to apply for this money and then we'll announce that you're getting it if we're re-elected.' The other part of this OPD is how they decided who they hand-picked to apply for this money that they were unilaterally dishing out, without any guidelines and without an independent or fair process. I reckon there is another colour coded spreadsheet floating around. That's why we've asked for this production of documents. Did they do exactly the same thing? Maybe they recycled the same spreadsheet. They're not known for their support for recycling, but I reckon in this case they might have just re-used the same spreadsheet to work out who to invite to apply for this public money, to shore up their own flailing political stock. But, again, Minister Colbeck can't provide the documents to us because the dog ate his homework and he needs more time.

We saw yesterday a massive confrontation in the Senate, where the Senate insisted on documents being provided, and the government refused to do so. We lost the vote by the very narrowest margin, of course, because One Nation changed their minds, having presumably come to some kind of arrangement with the government that was no doubt mutually beneficial. Will we see that happen again next Monday? We'll all wait and see.

I want to come to the details of sports rorts 2. The money was meant to be for 'female facilities and water safety'. We saw the Prime Minister crow a lot about women having change rooms when playing sport. Fantastic—no-one disagrees that that's needed. But barely any of the money went to women's change rooms. In fact, 14 per cent of the money went on female changing facilities—14 per cent. Most of it went to swimming pools. And where were most of those swimming pools? What do you know, 60 per cent were in coalition marginal seats. Goodness me! You couldn't make this stuff up. So 60 per cent was going to buy election outcomes. They weren't going to female change rooms; they were going to pools, predominantly in coalition seats.

The largest single grant was $25 million for a pool in Attorney-General Christian Porter's marginal seat. He got another pool; that was another $5 million worth. So he's had 30 million bucks for swimming pools in his marginal seat. He remains the Attorney-General. In fact, as Attorney-General he should be working on developing a federal corruption watchdog. But clearly there has been some benefit to him and to his government from the absence of a federal corruption watchdog, because we have seen sports rorts 1 and sports rorts 2 roll out. He's still in his seat. He's presumably got two swimming pools underway. I don't know whether he's got any female change room facilities. Perhaps his seat got some of the 14 per cent of the funding that actually went to women's change rooms. Corangamite was the other electorate, which the government actually ended up losing, with a sort of cruel irony. It was $30 million for two pools in Corangamite, another marginal seat.

In two particular instances of swimming pool funding, the local council didn't want those facilities. I'm sure those councils had very meritorious and legitimate requests for other forms of support, but they didn't want swimming pools; they were forced upon them. So not only were there no guidelines, not only did the coalition handpick the seats where these facilities would be announced and the applicants to which this money would be provided but they didn't even get the consent of the handful of councils who were saying, 'We don't want a swimming pool; our footpaths are cracked,' or 'we need some help with public transport', 'we need some help with waste facilities', whatever it might be. No, it's a pool or nothing. So, with Coranga pool, the council found out days before the election. They hadn't applied for the funding, and the pool has since closed because it leaks. Torquay pool—