Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a document relating to the order for the production of documents concerning the government response to the report of the Select Committee on the Administration of Sports Grants.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

In relation to the OPD concerning the government's response to the report on the sports rorts—surprise, surprise!—the minister has decided that the information still shouldn't be forthcoming, just like the documents relating to car park rorts, which are still not forthcoming. This is information that is in the public interest. We know why the government are not revealing this information. It is because they are hiding information. They are telling lies to the Australian public. They are trying to pretend that everything is fine, that everything is being done appropriately and that money is being spent with due consideration and due process. But it is not.

We know from the refusal to table documents relating to sports rorts and from the refusal to table documents relating to car park rorts that these are not isolated incidents. We have rorting left, right and centre. We have sports rorts, we have car park rorts and we have got the Building Better Regions Fund. Basically, government money, taxpayers' money, people's taxes, their hard-earned money, is being channelled into projects that purely serve the government's interests. It's being siphoned into projects that are being funded just because the government think it's going to help them win an election. We saw it with sports rorts and we saw it with the car park rorts.

People thought there was a proper process—as there should have been—but there wasn't. With sports rorts a process went on. Clubs applied for grants and thought there was going to be a fair process and that their grant applications were going to be considered fairly, and indeed they were. There was a process that ranked those projects to see which ones should be funded. But we know that, within the then sports minister's office, Senator McKenzie decided she didn't like that list of projects that were going to be funded, because those projects weren't in the government's interests. Most of those projects were not funded. Instead, the projects that were funded were the ones that they thought they could use to curry favour with the electorate to win votes. They were in either marginal seats or in seats where they wanted to reward their best mates. That's what happened with sports rorts.

We had hardworking people who put hundreds of hours into their applications, who thought that they would be getting money for upgrades to their sporting projects, left out in the cold. We had projects that scored right at the top of the list when they were being considered, according to their eligibility and meeting the criteria, that didn't get funded. It wasn't an accident that they didn't get funded; it was because they weren't the favoured projects. They weren't the ones that the government felt they could use to win the election. That was sports rorts. The ANAO, the Auditor-General, told us about what was going on, but when we asked for those documents, no, we didn't get them. The public is not able to see what's going on. The government are hiding information from the public. They are lying to the Australian public.

We saw at the same time the same thing going on with the car parks rorts. Here we have a program where even the advice of the department was that it should be a project for which people could apply but, no, it ended up being a program where only the favoured coalition MPs got to say which car parks could be funded. In fact, it was doubly outrageous because here is a scheme worth billions of dollars that's meant to be tackling urban congestion. All the evidence shows that, if you're trying to tackle urban congestion, you do not build more infrastructure for cars, because all that happens if you build more infrastructure for cars is you encourage more people to drive. We had an inquiry a fortnight ago into car park rorts. The transport and planning experts said it is universally accepted around the world that the way to tackle congestion is to give people alternatives to travelling by car, to give people decent public transport, to give people really good safe walking and cycling facility. That's how you get people out of their cars and that's how you tackle congestion, not by building more infrastructure for cars. But no, that advice, that information, that evidence was completely ignored. There is the first element of the deception on the Australian people.

The second element is okay, alright, we're building car parks because they're popular, and people seem to think that building car parks is a good idea. Who gets to decide where those car parks will be? Again, it is the coalition MPs whose marginal seats are at risk. Nobody else gets asked where these car parks should be built, just the coalition MP ins their marginal seats. It is crazy to be building car parks while trying so solving congestion, and even more crazy to be building car parks in Brighton and in Camberwell and in other inner suburban areas, where the last thing you want to be doing is encouraging more people to drive to the station. It is total foolishness and goes against the basis of good urban planning. But that didn't matter, because we had a government that decided here was a way they could try and win a few votes. Here was a way they could support the electoral outcomes. They could support the electoral campaigns of House of Representatives MPs whose seats were under a bit of threat.

Again, the Auditor-General told us that this was going on, that this was the reality of that total mismanagement of our taxpayers' money. But when we ask for the documents, they were not forthcoming on a public interest immunity claim with no justification at all. Suddenly documents become cabinet documents because they were passed within sniffing distance of the cabinet. We here in the Senate try and get this information through orders for the production of documents, and this government has the audacity to say, 'No, we're not giving it to you, Senate.' It is just totally outrageous. It is typical of a government that fear transparency. They fear accountability because they are doing the most underhanded so-called governance. They are governing in the interests of their mates. That's what's going on. We need a federal anticorruption commission to get to the bottom of this. We were told at our car parks inquiry two weeks ago that there was no doubt that this sort of behaviour was corrupt and that heads would roll if we had a federal anticorruption commission. We know that's the reason why this government is not the slightest bit interested in bringing in a federal anticorruption commission. They've put it off again because they don't want the possibility of having something holding them to account, to be actually making sure that we have processes that will run that are transparent and accountable. Instead, they are very happy with the way the situation is at moment: that the Senate tries to get the information and we don't get the information. Our orders for the production of documents just get denied.

Well, a time is going to come when there's going to be some responsibility. Sadly, we know that there isn't going to be any change from this government. That time when this government is going to be held to account is at the next election, because there's only one thing for a government that is so averse to transparency, so averse to accountability, so averse to putting in place the proper measures of decent, accountable government. There's only one thing for it, and that is to kick them out. So I am looking forward so much to the next election to see the back of this corrupt government and to get government that actually will be governing for the interests of the Australian public.

Question agreed to.