Sky News host Paul Murray says it’s important that Ministers are able to overrule public servants recommendations on where Commonwealth funding is awarded because bureaucrats are too concerned with diversity and rainbows.
The National’s Deputy Leader Bridget McKenzie resigned from her ministerial position on Sunday. McKenzie’s resignation followed accusations that while serving as Minister for Sport she had overruled the recommendations on which programs should be funded, and redirected the grants to projects which were in seats the government wanted to make a good impression in the lead up to the 2019 federal election. The saga has been dubbed the ‘sports rorts’ affair and has plagued the Morrison government for weeks.
Concern was first raised when Georgina Downer, the Liberal candidate for the South Australian seat of Mayo presented a giant sized novelty check to the local Bowling Club, usually funding is presented by the local member, in this case the Centre Alliance’s Rebecca Sharkie. An investigation by the independent office of the Auditor-General highlighted that many of the grants issued by Sports Australia in the lead up to the election has been adjusted by the Minister. It was also revealed that McKenzie was also a member of a gun club that she awarded a large amount of funding to, and her conflict of interest had not been declared.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison commissioned his own investigation into the Minister’s actions, charging Phillip Gaetjens, the secretary of the Office of the Department of Prime Minister and the Cabinet to look into the matter. Gaetjens was previously the Chief of Staff to Morrison from 2015 – 2018. Yesterday the report found that McKenzie had done nothing wrong in her decision to award grants based on electorate, but had broken the Ministerial Code of Conduct by not declaring her gun club membership.
Discussing the issue on Sky News, Paul Murray chatted to Daniel Wild from the right-wing think tank The Institute of Public Affairs, and Liz Storer from conservative lobby group Advance Australia.
Murray said it was important that Ministers stepped in to over rule bureaucrats or the result would be “computer says no” – lifting a line from the television show Little Britain.
Wild said McKenzie had made a good decision by taking funding away from a Victorian Roller Dreby Club and instead awarding it to a Football Club.
“She gave $500,000 to the Pakenham Footy Club which is in the south-east suburbs of Victoria, while the bureaucrats wanted that money to go to the Gippsland Lakes Roller Derby. Nobody in Victoria cares about the Roller Derby, they care about footy clubs.” Wild said.
The IPA spokesman said it was an example of how the Minister was more in-touch with community expectations, saying that giving funding to the sporty of Roller Derby was “identity box ticking”. The sport of roller derby was first played in Chicago in 1935 but has had an explosion of popularity in recent years and is particularly popular within LGBTIQ+ communities.
Murray said bureaucrats were not in touch with the needs of local communities.
“If it was down to the bureaucrat to exclusively decide where every dollar of tax paying money goes, it wouldn’t be about the worthiness of the project.”
Putting on a camp voice, Murray said “It would be about how diverse the application was, was it submitted to us on recycled paper, was there a rainbow logo somewhere in there?”
Liz Storer from Advance Australia said she was sure it would become a mandatory requirement of applying for funding.
Today National Party member Damian Drum said McKenzie may have used the sporting fund to maximise the coalition’s result at the election, but argued that similar influence has been used by previous governments at both a state and federal level.
Speaking to Patricia Karvelas on ABC News24 Drum said the practice has been occurring since federation and was done by all political parties, but he thought in the future there would be more transparent policies, but warned if they were strictly implemented there would be no need to have a government.
“The danger with that is that all of a sudden you might was well not have a government, you may as well not have ministers, because the money will simply be delved out by…bureaucrats and departmental chiefs.” Drum said.
OIP Staff
