Thegovernment are only interested in one thing and one thing alone: gettingthemselves re-elected. This whole system was biased against the sporting clubs,who thought they were on a level playing field, that this was honest and that,if they did the right thing and their applications were the best, they would berewarded with better sporting facilities. That simply did not happen on thisoccasion. The government simply said: 'Okay, where do we need to win a seat?Here's $500,000'. And, if you had a terrific proposal in a safe Labor seat or,for that matter, a safe Liberal seat, you never had a chance.
I'veheard what the Prime Minister has said, and one of his other defences is: 'We actuallyincreased the number of grants that went to Labor seats'. Well, that may or maynot be true; I'm not sure whether it is. But we do know that, where thegovernment did put money into a Labor seat, it was on the border of one of themarginal seats that they were trying to win—so at least 50 per cent of thesporting participants in that particular club would have lived in the marginalseat that the government was trying to win. So even there they can't be honestwith the Australian people. Even there they can't say to the Australian people:'Yes, we rorted that as well'.
SenatorWATERS(Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate) (10:13):Imove: That the Senate take note of the explanation. The explanation has beengiven, this time, by Minister Cash representing then Minister McCormack, whowas the responsible minister at the time of these pre-election sports rorts 2grants. And what do you know? The dog ate Minister McCormack's homework as wellas Minister Colbeck's homework! It seems they've got quite a bevy of canineseating all of these very revealing documents that they are desperate for nobodyto see. Once again, they've asked for more time, and, once again, we'reexpecting that when that time comes, we will be told that: 'Actually no; sorry,you can't have those documents because they are deeply embarrassing to ourgovernment.' This is what we saw happen yesterday with the Senate's request forthe Gaetjens report, the report which somehow magically found that there wasnothing to see, and that there had been no sports rorts—even though theindependent Auditor-General said clearly this was a massive rort.
Those aremy words, not his, but they were the implications of the findings of thatreport. So here we are again. The Senate is begging the government to show sometransparency, to show some guts and to have some decency, but the governmentactually doesn't have the standards, the moral compass, to say, 'We're going toput these documents in the public domain. 'The Senate is forcing the government to reveal these documents and the government's not even coming at that request. So here we are again, a government in complete disarray, rort after rort piling up, and they're desperately trying to pull up the shutters and hope that somehow they can protect themselves from actual scrutiny, but it's not working.
As I saidbefore, we asked for these documents because we actually want to get to thebottom of sports rorts number2. We already know that in sports rorts number1guidelines were ignored, money was dished out and there was a colour codedspreadsheet for which marginal seat would get which grant to shore up thisgovernment's flailing political stocks. With sports rorts 2, there weren't evenany guidelines at all; the government just hand-picked where that money wasgoing to go, sometimes against the wishes of the local councils in those areas.
We havesought documents to examine: did anybody advise the government?
Did ourfrank and fearless public service do their job and say, 'You really should havesome guidelines?' We are confident that the department would have issued suchadvice, and the public deserve to see whether this government simply, onceagain, ignored that frank and fearless advice. But we'll have to wait and seewhether we get that material.
Don'thold your breath, folks. We also wanted to know what the communications werebetween outgoing Minister McCormack, who was responsible for this program atthe time, pre-election, and incoming Minister Colbeck, who is now responsiblefor the administration of this program. We want to know what they said to eachother about how on earth they were going to explain this second instalment ofsports rorts.
How canthey possibly explain the dishing out of public money in marginal seats, rightbefore an election, with no guidelines, with no application process and with a purported focus on female sports change room facilities that actually just ended up being swimming pools in coalition seats? That correspondence would be very interesting indeed, and no doubt that's why the government has asked for more time. It's also, no doubt, why they will eventually say, 'Oh, that's cabinet in confidence, 'or, 'That public interest immunity, 'as we saw happen earlier in the week.
Expand
