SenatorWATERS(Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate) (09:42)(13 February 2020):
I rise totake note of the explanation given—or, really, the excuse made by MinisterColbeck, because once again the dog ate his homework! He's got a very hungrydog it seems! They want more time to comply with this order to producedocuments about sports rorts No. 2. Well, we saw with sports rorts No. 1 thatthey 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 nextsitting 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 thisgovernment just does not understand that democracies and executive governmentsshould operate with integrity, transparency and accountability. So just whenyou thought it was safe to go and play sport again—no. You've had sports rorts1; 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 forcingsome money on you for facilities that your local council might not even want,as has been reported on at least two occasions.
This timearound, in sports rorts 2, the main issue is: it's not like they ignored theguidelines like they did in sports rorts 1; this time around they didn't evenhave any guidelines. They simply issued invitations, they hand-picked who wouldget this money and they then announced that before the election. I think sportsrorts 2 is more egregious than sports rorts 1 because they didn't even have thedecency to seek to develop guidelines for how to spend public money.
This wasan even more blatant rort than sports rorts No. 1. This government justcontinues to find new lows.
So therewere no guidelines at all to be ignored, which is why we've asked for thesedocuments today. We want to know if the department said: 'Guys, you reallyshould have some guidelines. This is public money. These are not your personalfunds 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 PublicService would have done their job and advised that there should have been guidelinesto disburse public money. We'll wait until Monday the 24th to be told that wecan't have those documents. This was invite only. The government said, 'We'dlike you to apply for this money and then we'll announce that you're getting itif we're re-elected.' The other part of this OPD is how they decided who theyhand-picked to apply for this money that they were unilaterally dishing out,without any guidelines and without an independent or fair process. I reckonthere is another colour coded spreadsheet floating around. That's why we'veasked for this production of documents.
Did theydo exactly the same thing?Maybethey recycled the same spreadsheet.
They're not known for their support forrecycling, but I reckon in this case they might have just re-used the samespreadsheet to work out who to invite to apply for this public money, to shoreup their own flailing political stock.
But, again, Minister Colbeck can'tprovide the documents to us because the dog ate his homework and he needs moretime. We saw yesterday a massive confrontation in the Senate, where the Senateinsisted on documents being provided, and the government refused to do so. Welost the vote by the very narrowest margin, of course, because One Nationchanged their minds, having presumably come to some kind of arrangement withthe government that was no doubt mutually beneficial.
Will wesee that happen again next Monday? We'll all wait and see.
