Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Improved Grants Reporting) Bill 2021. It's pretty tough to start a speech by saying: 'This bill will clean up some of the corruption and rorting of taxpayer dollars that's become endemic under the current Liberal-National government'—because the only thing that's really going to fix it is getting rid of the government. This is only going to attempt to clean up some of the mess and address some of the disgraceful behaviours that we've seen commonly done—just as part of business as usual, according to this government. I'm talking about what people know as 'sports rorts', about the Building Better Regions Fund, about the National Commuter Car Park Fund—and the list just goes on and on and on. We need to ensure that we as a house of review oppose this spending by the government of billions of taxpayer dollars as if it's their own Liberal-National party campaign money.

The Commuter Car Park Fund is just one small example of incredibly poor governance and cynical politics, even for the Morrison government. This failed fund has built only three of the car parks that it promised before the last election—three car parks in three years!—and the government have cancelled six car parks, double the number that they've built, because they have shown an inability to plan properly. And there are 47 other car parks that are unlikely to ever be built. With all the resources of government, with access to the entire capacity of the government of Australia, they couldn't get the plan right, and in three years they've built three car parks. It's a disgrace. It's a disaster of a project, and it was caused purely by the political greed of those opposite. A planning process was absent, and the project was based on an electoral timeline, with no due diligence. This scheme is exactly what happens when the Liberal and National parties decide to use your Australian taxpayer dollars as their personal re-election fund. They did it in 2019, and they're lining up for a replay in 2022. On the Central Coast, where I live—represented in the southern end by Lucy Wicks, the member for Robertson—it's been an utterly failed and hapless and haphazard planning project. The local member failed Robertson when she did nothing for eight years—no planning, despite handing out at the station as commuters headed to Sydney. Then she rushed a completely unsatisfactory process that's gone nowhere because it was always going to go nowhere. This was about an announcement and not about the actual delivery of vital infrastructure for coasties.

This bill before us today aims to stop rorts such as the grossly mismanaged commuter car park rorting fund. It's intended to halt local members and their Liberal and National Party leadership from funnelling money into dodgy projects with incomplete data and from making commitments and announcements as if they're going to happen but which never actually translate into reality in people's lives. Another one was sports rorts—it wasn't an isolated incident; it was evidence of an endemic culture of rorting and corruption. The Community Sport Infrastructure Program was a $100 million taxpayer funded coalition slush fund to save their political future. They didn't spend it appropriately and with care. They spent it to get themselves elected. A scathing ANAO report found that it was afflicted by severe distribution bias and that in the last round of funding 70 per cent of the department's suggestions were overruled in place of electorates picked out on a spreadsheet colour coded to let the Liberal and National Party members and candidates make announcements that were likely to increase their votes and get them elected. The ANAO even found that this project may have been illegal. I see Minister Reynolds is here still trying to cover up robodebt. We've seen them do illegal things where they actually had to pay back money to Australians. The ANAO said it was not evident to them what the legal authority was for them to roll out this $100 million worth of sports rorts money.

Shocking as that is, it's just the tip of the iceberg with this lot. They really have a born-to-rule mentality and they really think that every taxpayer dollar that comes into this place is there for their personal discretion—not to build the nation. God forbid that we should lift our eyes, look to the future and advance everyone. No, this is about personal victories, personal interest and power for the Liberal Party over good governance for the Australian people. That's why we should kick that lot out at the next election. They do not deserve people's votes, not on the back of what they've done. Public governance and accountability are the basics for a government. These guys do not know what that means.

The Liberals and Nationals are happy to splash taxpayer cash wherever they see their own political interest but rarely where the public interest needs to be served. We've seen that with JobMaker, a much lauded $4 billion plan that delivered just one per cent of the jobs that were announced—the jobs that were promised. That happened because the government rushed it. It was poorly designed. They don't care. They got the headline with the number four billion—they'll use it in a lovely glossy blue brochure in your letterbox. But those brochures that this government will put out are based on a litany of lies and deceptions.

With the Building Better Regions Fund—I have to laugh when I say it, because it's a joke the way that they corrupted this one. I know what it means to come from a regional part of New South Wales. I'm just over 100 kilometres out of Sydney, but it's another world. When you get to the other side of the Great Dividing Range in places like Cobar, Coonabarabran, Broken Hill, Wilcannia and the seat of Farrer, it's a whole different world. That's regional. This government don't seem to understand that, even though they purport to represent it. Under this government, your taxpayer dollars are wasted by incompetence and a failure to design proper infrastructure projects, or they are corrupted by a government that wants to save hapless, non-working MPs who just roll up when an election comes around, confident that they're going to get the vote from the National Party members out there in the bush. They just show up for elections, and the people in the community are not getting their fair share.

The Building Better Regions Fund managed over $105 million in grants to regional communities across Australia—at least, that's how it was described—yet there was a secret ministerial planning instrument that managed those grants. It saw over half of the funds, more than $50 million worth, awarded to projects that were ranked far lower than many much more worthy, higher-ranked applications—as assessed by people who are building for the nation, who are professionals in government who understand getting value for your dollar.

I come from a small-business family. Like many of my colleagues, I know small businesses are the heart of this country; that is where jobs are created. Entrepreneurship requires people to do their jobs brilliantly, with due diligence and to spend resources in wise ways. This government would not know what wisdom looks like when it comes to spending a buck. The only 'wisdom' they have is a self-inflated sense of their right to government and their willingness to corrupt the processes of government to fund what they want for their own personal advantage over the advantage of regional communities, and I am sick of it. I am sick of it people from the regions of this country being dudded by their own government: being given announcements but getting no swimming pool; getting no funding for roads they know they need to be fixed; getting no investment in infrastructure that will improve their local economies. Overwhelmingly, these poorly ranked grants went to Liberal and National electorates at a rate that would have been deemed completely inappropriate if the proper scrutiny had been applied.

It is as simple as this: a swimming pool in North Sydney that was funded out of this pool of money is being dressed up by this government as a regional infrastructure project. That is how cynical they are, and that is how stupid they think the Australian people are. They think they can pull the wool over our eyes. They tell you they are supporting the regions and then put money into the pool at North Sydney. What a con from the ad man, Mr Morrison, and his whole team of minions, who line up behind him and continue in the same way. There is no program that those opposite will fail to rort. It doesn't matter what the experts say, it doesn't matter what the departments say, it doesn't matter what the community says; they only want to do what gets them re-elected, and that is way too low a bar to set.

The Australian National Audit Office was absolutely scathing about the car park rorts. It found that car parks were heavily centred in Liberal electorates, particularly in Victoria. The government was clearly trying to save its seats down there. Mr Frydenberg must have thought he was under incredible threat because he got four of the car parks. The reality is that, as the department put on the record, most of the congested roads in Australia are found in Sydney. I will stand up every day for my state, but I will stand up with integrity and fairness. If money needs to go to another state to advance this nation, then that is where should go—when a scheme is appropriately designed. You cannot just look after your own at the expense of the rest. That is unethical behaviour, but that is the playbook of this government—unethical behaviour—and that is why we need this piece of legislation to rein it in. We cannot contain it; it is endemic and out of control. This piece of legislation, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Improved Grants Reporting) Bill, is merely a reining in of the most egregious practices of this government.

The government don't support a federal national integrity commission. Is it any wonder? They probably won't back this bill, because they don't want any containment on what they've found as their political survival strategy. Their political power is based on the rorting, the corrupt use, the inappropriate use, the poorly designed use of the public funds that are Australian taxpayers' dollars, dollars which should be used so judiciously to advance the nation, not the Liberal-National government. The kind of behaviour I'm describing here has to be described. It has to be called out for what it is. It takes a lot of work from opposition to get the facts from this secretive government that wants to hide the truth from Australians. I don't like having to make this speech, because it erodes public trust and public confidence in the rectitude and effectiveness of the government, but I'm putting it on the record now because, pretty soon, Australians are going to have the chance to vote, and I'm calling on Australians when they vote to recognise the shameful behaviour, the disgraceful, corrupt behaviour of this government in its industrial-scale rorting of taxpayer money to the benefit of its own political interests and not those of Australians.

With this government it is all about politics and division and themselves. It's not about Australians. It's not about our future. It's not about Australia's benefit. It's about their personal benefit. That is not satisfactory. Heartless political arithmetic benefits only those in power, not those on the ground. Because of rushed political announcements without any due diligence, the Central Coast is further away from getting a car park than ever. But all that was needed was for Mrs Lucy Wicks to stand up with Mr Morrison and make an announcement to shore up a majority. You won't get away with it twice, Lucy Wicks. You've lied to the Australian people on the Central Coast for long enough. It's over, and this legislation is there to help.