MARK DREYFUS MP

Member for Isaacs

ABC Statewide Victoria Nicole Chvastek 22 January 2020

22 January 2020

SUBJECT: Sports Rorts.

MARK DREYFUS
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
MEMBER FOR ISAACS



E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE VICTORIA
WEDNESDAY, 22 JANUARY, 2020

SUBJECT: Sports Rorts.

NICOLE CHVASTEK: The Prime Minister says that he supports the Nationals Deputy Leader. She declined to be interviewed today. We requested an interview with the Senator, Bridget McKenzie, but she declined to come on air. Her colleague, David Littleproud has been defending her.

LITTLEPROUD: Well, all programs that were approved under the sports program were within the guidelines and I think the Auditor-General detailed that quite explicitly in his report, I think we are very quick to say just because we spend a cent in regional Australia, it's pork barrelling. No it's not. It's about regional Australia just getting their fair share.

That's the Water Minister David Littleproud speaking yesterday, although he seems to have dialled back his support a little bit today.

LITTLEPROUD: Or look, obviously, I'm not privy to all the circumstances and I think that's why we've just got to be calm, we've just got to be methodical and work through this. I think the Government's been very transparent with this and that's why we should be proud of living in a country where there is transparency, where everything can be put out in the light of day.

Mark Dreyfus is the Shadow Attorney-General. Mark Dreyfus good afternoon.

MARK DREYFUS, SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL:Good afternoon Nicole, thanks for having me.

CHVASTEK: Should we be proud of the transparency around this process?

DREYFUS:There hasn't been transparency. That's a nonsense from David Littleproud and just about all of the ministers have been talking nonsense since the Auditor-General's report was released.

We haven't been told which projects were recommended by Sport Australia that missed out, other than you can tell from the Auditor-General's report a whole lot of projects that rated more highly, that had more merit than the ones that got the money, missed out.

What we need to see is who they were. Some of them have been prepared to speak up and say, we applied, we didn't get a grant. And what's happened here is a disgraceful, corrupt, rort by the Morrison Government, which instead of following the guidelines, the published guidelines, they use different criteria that namely, let's give the money to marginal seats that we're hoping to win, and sure up our own seats that we are fearful of losing. That's what happened here.

CHVASTEK: The Prime Minister says that no rules have been broken.

DREYFUS: That's just false.The guidelines said nothing at all about sending money to marginal seats that the Liberals wanted to win off Labor or sending money to marginal seats that the Liberals hold and they want to keep. That's what happened. The minister interfered with this program. She overrode the published guidelines. She did so, according to the Auditor-General, without any lawful authority that he has been able to identify and that's because the Act doesn't envisage Sport Australia being overridden by the Minister on a published guidelines program.

There is nothing that's right about this. It's a corrupt rort. It's extraordinary that these ministers continue to defend Bridget McKenzie. And if we didn't have enough already today we've learned from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that she's given money to a club that she's a full fee paying member of - that's the description the club gave her - without disclosing it.

CHVASTEK: What's wrong with giving $36,000 to a little regional clay shooting club?

DREYFUS:Nothing's wrong with a grant being made to any of the clubs that were lucky enough to receive the money. But the problem here is that she had a conflict of interest. She shouldn't have been involved in the decision making. It's a clear breach of the ministerial standards.

The reason we insist on resignations Nicole - and I think most members of the Australian public will just be scratching their heads at the Government's conduct here - the reason we have resignations is so that there is a consequence for failing to uphold clearly known standards.

Now, one of those clearly known standards is that ministers should not participate in decision making where they have got a conflict of interest. She's a full fee paying member of this gun club and she gave it a grant without telling anybody that she was a member of the gun club. Now that is as clear a breach of the ministerial standards as you could want.

But the whole thing - to go back to the program as a whole - was rorted by Bridget McKenzie, presumably on the instructions of Scott Morrison, which is why he is probably wanting to defend her.

More comes out every day. We've learned this week, according to some journalists, that a senior member of the Prime Minister's own staff was involved with Senator McKenzie in making those decisions. We need to hear about that too.

There's been no transparency other than, thank goodness, the Auditor-General doing this report, after we it was actually me - referred the matter to the Auditor-General. We were alerted to something going wrong by Georgina Downer, the Liberal candidate for Mayo, getting advance notice of a grant being made to a bowls club that enabled her to stand up with a fake cheque, pretending that it was her own money that was being given to the Yankalilla Bowls Club. The reality was it was government money, taxpayers money, and she was only pretending. That's what alerted us and that's why I referred the matter to the Auditor-General. But in my worst nightmares I wouldn't have imagined that there was such a disastrous, disgraceful rorting as has been uncovered by the Auditor-General and for the life of me I don't understand how the Government is still claiming that it was defensible. Its not.

CHVASTEK: You say that it's disgraceful, and it's corrupt, and it's a rort but Labor has form in this space as well.

DREYFUS:No, I totally reject that Nicole

CHVASTEK: I mean, the reality is that politicians from all sides, once in government, will funnel money towards marginal electorates in attempt to try and win that seat in the lead up to a federal election. It has been done since the dawn of time Mark Dreyfus and Labor is just as guilty.

DREYFUS:I don't think you'll find that where there is published guidelines, where you have got a rating process set up by a statutory agency - in this case Sport Australia, the agency that used to be called the Australian Sports Commission - it has published guidelines. In good faith sporting clubs with hard working volunteers across Australia have participated and sent away applications that they've spent hundreds of hours working up. They were never told that the Government was going to poke into this and instead of applying the published guidelines and the published criteria, it was going to put a filter over it and give the money, even when the projects were less deserving, to marginal electorate to boost their election chances.

That's the disgrace here and you might be right that there is pork-barrelling events on a one off basis in the past, and you can point to them, but this is rorting on an industrial scale. The Auditor-General describes how Bridget McKenzie set up a parallel process, and apart from the merit-based guidelines process that was being administered by Sport Australia.

CHVASTEK: Ros Kelly did the same thing when she was Sports Minister.

DREYFUS: And she resigned.

CHVASTEK: Yes, and so my point stands, though, that pork-barrelling using taxpayers funds is something which is commonplace right across the political spectrum.

DREYFUS: Not this kind of rorting. And when there is this kind of rorting and when there is this kind of corrupt practice, then the minister has to go. Ros Kelly 25 years ago did resign and it's a good example of why ultimately the minister is responsible and the consequence for this kind of corrupt behaviour and breaking of guidelines and potentially acting outside the law is that she resigned. If she wont resign then Mr. Morrison has no alternative but to sack her.

CHVASTEK: Shadow Minister, thank you.

DREYFUS: Thank you very much Nicole.

ENDS