It would be helpful if senators who were heard in silence could give the same level of respect to other senators when they're speaking.

What the Albanese government has done differently with this election commitment program—an election commitment program that governments from time immemorial have delivered—is to clearly follow the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles, which were updated to take account of the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit inquiry into Commonwealth grants administration. The Commonwealth grants guidelines explicitly allow closed, non-competitive, grant processes and assert that better-practice non-competitive grants should name eligible applicants and provide information on how eligibility is determined. And that's exactly what was done with this grants program. In every possible way, the Albanese government, through this grants program, has not just closely followed but followed in every way the guidelines that have been issued for grants programs and that were updated to take into account recommendations from inquiries into previous grants rounds.

Speaking of previous grants rounds, the most puzzling aspect, I think, of the opposition's attack on the government over a number of weeks and today about this grants program is that it has been led by Senator McKenzie. I remember, when this story first blew up in the media, being incredibly surprised that, of all the people in this parliament, Senator McKenzie would be the person leading the charge for the opposition over this. We know that her motivation is to desperately continue to try to clear her name from not just her involvement but her leadership role in the biggest rort committed under the former coalition government. And that is really saying something, because we know that that government had a series of rorted programs, whether it be the car park program that old mate Josh Frydenberg, wannabe opposition leader, engineered, or various regional rorts that were committed, particularly led by the National Party. But, sitting on top of them, the biggest rorted program under the former coalition government was the one led by Senator McKenzie, better known as sports rorts.