MARK DREYFUS
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
SENATOR DON FARRELL
SHADOW SPECIAL MINISTER OF STATE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SPORT
SHADOW MINISTER FOR TOURISM
SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
PORTER TOO CONFLICTED TO RULE ON SPORTS RORTS
Attorney-General Christian Porter has today confirmed he is too conflicted to have any role in determining the legality of the sports rorts scheme.
The nations first law officer has been asked by Scott Morrison to scratch around for some plausible legal basis for grants made by his close colleague, the Minister for Sport, for which the Auditor-General found there was no legal authority.
This is despite the fact that in the months leading up to the election Mr Porter announced $926,865 in funding from that same Community Sports Infrastructure program for his marginal Western Australian electorate of Pearce.
Now, even before receiving this legal advice Mr Porter has cleared Bridget McKenzie, declaring it is not a rort for the minister to take a "slightly different view" than her department and that it was not unusual for the minister to award a grant to her own shooting club.
The appointment of a member of cabinet to investigate the actions of another member of cabinet, and find ways of justifying this corrupted process from which his own election campaign benefited, is untenable.
If the Government is serious about determining the legal basis for the sports rorts scheme, it is not enough for the Attorney-General to obtain secret advice from the Australian Government Solicitor. At a bare minimum, the Attorney-General must refer the entire scheme to the Commonwealth Solicitor-General for comprehensive and independent legal advice and commit to making that advice public.
More than 400 grassroots sports clubs had applications highly regarded by Sport Australia thrown out by this Government so it could instead funnel the money into its re-election campaign.
These grassroots sports club applied for grant money in good faith and on the basis of publicly available guidelines, only to have their hard work thrown out because the Minister, quite possibly in collaboration with others in Morrison's Cabinet, had established her own secret process to rort the scheme on behalf of the Coalition.
This betrayal of the sporting community means it is now impossible for clubs to have any faith that this Government will assess their grant applications on merit, just as the Australian public can have no faith that a minister who benefited from this rort is able to properly investigate this scandal.
WEDNESDAY, 22 JANUARY 2020
