Labor and crossbench senators are pushing for a special estimates hearing into the government’s $660 million car park rorts as soon as possible.
This week, a report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) revealed the government had funnelled money from a program to fund commuter car parks towards projects in Coalition-held or marginal Labor seats ahead of the 2019 election.
The report found 87% of the projects, funded through the Urban Construction Fund, were in Coalition held electorates or target electorates. The seats with the most projects — like Goldstein and Kooyong in Victoria — are all held by the Coalition. Then-urban infrastructure minister Alan Tudge and staff in the Prime Minister’s Office were involved in the key decisions.
Members of the Senate Standing Committees on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport called for committee chair Nationals Senator Susan McDonald to hold a spillover estimates hearing.
Under Senate procedures, a spillover estimates hearing can be held if three members write to the chair requesting it. Labor senators Glenn Sterle and Malarndirri McCarthy, and the Greens’ Peter Whish-Wilson requested McDonald hold the hearing.
Labor’s urban infrastructure spokesman Andrew Giles said the ANAO had “uncovered a major scandal“.
“We know that the Morrison government failed both in terms of good governance and project planning, leading to ineligible projects being funded, massive cost blowouts and ongoing delays in delivery,” he said.
“Most seriously, we learnt the lengths the Morrison government went to in the political targeting of projects, with secret spreadsheets shared between the then-minister Tudge and the Prime Minister’s Office and prime ministerial meetings held to determine which projects to fund.”
But this week, Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher rejected the opposition’s criticism of the program.
“There’s no suggestion that decisions made by ministers were outside of authority,” he told the ABC.
The ANAO’s revelations came just days after Senator Bridget McKenzie was returned to cabinet as minister for regionalisation. McKenzie lost her position early last year over her role in the sports rorts affair, when the government overruled recommendations from the department to fund community sporting clubs in marginal seats ahead of the last election.
That scandal, also revealed by an ANAO report, led to Labor and the crossbench creating a long-running Senate inquiry which reported earlier this year.
But the car parks affair is far larger than the rort that undid McKenzie, and is the latest in a long line of instances where the Coalition has used taxpayer-funded grants to target Liberal or marginal seats.
“Just like sports rorts, this scandal goes right to the top with the prime minister’s grubby fingerprints all over it,” Giles said. “And this time, two-thirds of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money is at stake.”
Parliament isn’t sitting until August, and much of the country is in some form of lockdown, but the opposition hopes to get an estimates session going within the next few weeks.
Yesterday, committee chair Susan McDonald hit out at Labor for revealing their plans to the media, telling Guardian Australia it was longstanding convention that international committee matters aren’t publicly discussed.
“Given that the media has received the application before I had, then this will be a matter that is also considered at the next private meeting of the committee,” she said.
Just as I was thinking that, maybe, maybe, things could not get much worse the League of Nonstop Pilferers has outdone itself, yet again. The LNP sets new benchmarks in corruption every day.
While one could be naive enough to hope that there cannot be much lower to sink I am certain the LNP has any number of past and future rorts under covers in their sheltered workshop – the engine house for systemic theft by deception. Our one hope is that they are at the end of their reputational risk phase and entering upon their reputational and institutional Götterdämmerung.
Unfortunately, it appears that neither large segments of the Australian electorate nor the main stream media give a fig about it. Australia is drifting towards national decline, from a second rate regional power to that once predicted banana republic status, in the world with the LNP at the helm.
League of Nonstop Pilferers
Thanks for that! Pillagers and Plunderers also spring to mind.
As well as drifting into national decline Australia is marching firmly towards an autocratic and militarist state with more and more ex- and serving military officers being drafted into the public service to do the work of a certain political party. This party already has its own police force, known as the AFP, and a secretive organisation with black and silver uniforms, known as Border Farce. The same thing has being on with the ABC ever since one J W Howard was in charge of things. The only thing that has saved the nation so far has been the utter incompetence of this band of repressive idiots.
As indeed, are rest of world. Democratic, free nation(s), leadership failures; giving way to rising authoritarianism. And as such, will rapidly accelerate due to pending waves of increasing severity due to climate threat. No longer a debate. Rather, an indisputable reality.
Could this be the worst government with the worst PM ever to grace Australia during a worldwide pandemic? It certainly seems so.
Most corrupt absolutely. Understandable when Morrison’s CV is inspected; sacked for fraud…
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2020/10/10/scott-morrison-was-sacked-as-managing-director-of-tourism-australia-for-financial-fraud-why-should-we-trust-him-with-our-money-now/
Australia, we must fight Morrison’s slogans with one of our own. How about “SIMPLY SACK SCOTTY’.
His year of quarantine and vaccine management is what you’d expect from someone with the disturbing “dark triad” personality disorder. Maybe the big carparks were for his big u-turns on Astra-Zeneca?
Or maybe even just, “Sack Simple!”
YES.
Abbot and Credlin were shockers but then along came the grandstanding Morrison and with him unbridled corruption; incompetence and deception all facilitated by News – Sky – Ch9 – Sydney based shock jocks.
And we must always acknowledge that although the Liar from the Shire is the Coalition’s very own godfather, his underling MP’s perform their crimes with ardour and vigour with a righteous contempt for the law…understandable when you have some of the commonwealth forces in your back pocket.
I’ve got rort fatigue from these guys. Seriously, how much more can they get away with?
That is for Murdoch to decide.
In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.
There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/
Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) as general manager.
The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).
Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament.
By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government.
“The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.
HANSARD Tuesday, 28 November 2000 Page: 19895
”Tourism Council of Australia: Funding
Senator SCHACHT (2:14 PM) —My question is addressed to Senator Kemp, the Assistant Treasurer.
How does the Assistant Treasurer justify the $2.3 million GST start-up assistance grant which was given to the Tourism Council when that organisation was insolvent?
Is he aware that the general manager of the GST Start-Up Assistance Office has stated that the office would not have contracted the council if they had been aware of the facts?
Why weren’t they aware of the facts? Is it true that the council breached its contract by charging for attendance at its GST seminars?
What role did the director of the New South Wales Liberal Party, Mr Scott Morrison, or the former managing director of the council, Liberal MP Mr Bruce Baird, play in securing the $2.3 million grant?
Minister, in particular, will you carry out an investigation to ensure that all the money has been properly acquitted?
Secondly, will you also investigate why the Tourism Council apparently was permitted to breach its contract by charging tourist businesses $40 each to attend the supposedly free GST seminars?”
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:”chamber/hansards/2000-11-28/0007″;src1=sm1
In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully.
The NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/11/17/morrison-hijacked-nz-tourism-review/15423732007158
Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.
The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998).
Clark was John Howard’s golfing partner and supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner.
Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission.
By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party.
Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.
Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison?
“He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.
He was sacked in 2006 in a unanimous decision of the board led by former Nationals leader and deputy PM Tim Fischer, which has never been fully explained. It’s noteworthy, again, that Clark was the deputy chairman of TA.
There also remain unanswered questions about tenders from the ANAO report that have still not been made public.
Following the second NSW state Liberal defeat in which Morrison had played a senior role, he quickly turned his attention to the seat of Cook.
Despite references from senior Liberal figures including Howard, Morrison did not even make the final ballot in pre-selection, gaining only eight votes and losing to Michael Towke.
Rort Fatigue.
That’s it! I’ve been wondering what I was suffering from. Medical science has been baffled but now we know!
Combine that with the “stayathome” lockdown and you can forgive me for wanting to go to NZ
Imagine if other MP’s such as Angus Taylor, Barnaby Joyce and Bridget McKenzie etc. were hit with private prosecutions. They would have heart attacks and it would help really shine the light on government corruption.
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2021/07/01/christian-porter-to-be-charged-with-the-rape-of-katharine-thornton-in-a-private-prosecution-led-by-an-experienced-legal-team/
It seems that scottie from marketing has just been perfecting his MO from his time in the tourism industry which led to his departure from the industry.
It isn’t his fingerprints, it is his game plan and now that he has floated (like excreta) into his position of Prime Minimalist dictator, there is no government oversight into this theft, because that in fact is what it is.
Has anyone gone out and asked the miners doing 12 hour shifts, 3 weeks on and 1 week off, paying massive amounts of tax, if they mind if their money is being used to put free car parking in for the suburban dweller or building sports clubs called “the Taj” in the PM’s seat?