This is part five in a series. For the rest of the series, go here.
One day, when the book is written on the corruption of Australian politics, there will need to be a section devoted to the four months which preceded the May 2019 election. It was during this period that, among other things, the Morrison government gave $4.6 million in grants to the Pentecostal-linked Esther Foundation, with funds drawn, magically, from grants schemes run by the government.
As we’ve revealed this week, the prime minister was front and centre, unveiling the grant in person to Esther — an organisation which shares Morrison’s particular religious beliefs and sits in the marginal seat of Hasluck, then held by the Coalition’s Ken Wyatt by just 2.1%.
It is only now that serious allegations are emerging relating to how young women were treated inside the Esther facility, raising pointed questions about how and why the grants came to be approved.
How much money was poured into just one seat?
Crikey has reconstructed a piece of the four months that helped save Hasluck.
January 2019: The government awards a $630,000 grant to the Esther Foundation, through the Safer Communities Fund, signed off by then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton.
Late February/early March 2019: a $4 million grant is approved for the Esther Foundation. According to the federal Health Department the foundation applied for the grant “in February” directly through the office of Minister Greg Hunt. It was a “non-competitive selection process”. The Health Department says the grant was approved on March 7, the day it was announced by the prime minister on a visit to Perth.
April 2019: local member Ken Wyatt announces more than $405,000 in grants from the government’s Community Sport Infrastructure Grant program, aka the sports rorts fund. This includes funding for tennis courts, basketball courts and bowling greens in his electorate.
Wyatt also trumpets earlier sports grants made from the same fund, for the Mundaring Tennis Club ($150,460) the Forrestfield Rhinos Rugby Club ($180,000) and the Mundaring Hardcourts ($245,791).
It emerges that Wyatt’s seat along with the independent-held seat of Indi received among the highest levels of funding in Australia. Wyatt won his seat with an increased majority and now holds it with a margin 5.4%.
KA-CHING! The grants we have been able to track total $5.6 million.
So where was the PM in all this?
A standout feature of the pre-election period of 2019 is that no politician has paid a serious price for the large-scale abuse of public funds. Sports rorts’ Bridget McKenzie was the unlucky one and was dispatched to the backbench, though oh so briefly.
In the sports rorts case it emerged that the prime minister’s office and McKenzie’s office had exchanged more than 100 emails on the grants distribution between October 2018 and April 2019 when the election was called.
Despite the email frenzy up to and beyond the final hours of executive government, no evidence emerged that Morrison had been personally involved. The same applies to other funds which were later found to be used as slush funds for marginal seats. In the case of the Urban Congestion Fund, it emerged that staffers from Minister Alan Tudge’s office had put together a list of the country’s 20 most marginal seats.
In the case of the Esther Foundation millions, however, Morrison was very much present. He fronted up and spoke in a highly personal way about the public money he was giving to the foundation: “I don’t invest in projects that don’t work,” he told the women of Esther. At times he really does hold a hose.
Crime and punishment
So what are some comparisons?
Bridget McKenzie failed to declare her membership of the Wangaratta Clay target club which had received $36,000 in public money from the fund McKenzie administered. (McKenzie made that grant just 10 days before Morrison journeyed to Wyatt’s seat to make his own announcement.)
In NSW Gladys Berejiklian has come to grief over some $35 million in grants to the seat of Wagga, with evidence showing her secret amour, Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, had lobbied for the funds.
Morrison had a clear role in making a $4 million grant to Esther based on a highly questionable and murky process which saw the grant processed and agreed to within at most four weeks.
Corruption doesn’t need to be personal to warrant an inquiry by the likes of ICAC. It can also be about systems.
No wonder Morrison wants nothing to do with a federal ICAC. But if faith in government means anything there should be an independent inquiry into the Esther grants.
Do you have information about the Esther Foundation? You can share it with David Hardaker at dhardaker@protonmail.com or via Signal on +61 431421056. All correspondence will be treated in confidence and you will be contacted prior to any publication.
Morrison couldn’t afford to go heavy on McKenzie : because she had her own shovel (and a few emails), and could dig up bodies the like of Hasluck?
As much as I viscerally feel in agreement with your assessment I do not cognitively agree that the current body politic, to the extent it appears to exist, has much idea or interest in the past i.e. as of midnight, 10 February 2022. If one thinks of how long and under what circumstances collective workplace forces coalesced in the 1970’s and 1980’s and the triggers for such self-interest and activism that seem strangely absent in current times. It puts me in mind of a friend’s lap dog in the 1970’s that openly presented its uderside in supplication to the boots of its master.
“No wonder Morrison wants nothing to do with a federal ICAC. But if faith in government means anything there should be an independent inquiry into the Esther grants.”
On the other hand the evidence of the latest cabinet leak shows Morrison is not the most ICAC-phobic member of the government. The leak is described in the media as an attempt to damage Morrison but it seems even more damaging to his colleagues as we see their plain terror at the notion of being under any scrutiny.
But although an an inquiry into the Esther grants is justifiable it is a big leap to think it would restore any faith in government. That must be more than inquiries long after the event that present their findings and are over, while nothing changes. What is needed is a system that punishes with appropriate severity those responsible for such abuses of their office, swift enough to act before they have disappeared from public life and which is robust enough to deter others who might be thinking of doing it.
It’s also quite likely that Morrison just lied in that meeting to bring an ICAC bill.
One has to wonder at the apprehended target of the leaks. With the disparate egos involved the perpetrators are as numerous as the fingers on your hands. on the other hand, the one and only target, Well>?????
There are no consequences for this form of corruption because it results in victory in general elections.
History will repeat this May if afrydenbergs $16b is spent wisely enough to bend the marginals the coalition’s way.
There will be no federal ICAC in the next parliament and the cycle will repeat.
Yes. Whenever there are credible allegations (not Trump’s lies) that somebody has rigged an election or attempted to do so, one of the following happens
The number of elections promptly investigated, cancelled and re-run under fair conditions while the malefactors are properly dealt with is near enough zero. We might say rigging an election never succeeds in much the same way as treason, according to John Harington:
Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.
“For evil to succeed it must show a kind face”.
When a federal ICAC is finally established it will spend years investigating this most corrupt (allegedly) government. I hope they get their just desserts.
Such a body MUST be formed by the next labor government (whenever that may be) and it must have sufficient retrospectivity to investigate the current bunch of thieves.
There are few laws that this bunch of thieves have actually broken, because they don’t specifically exist.
The catch all charge is Misconduct in public office.
That is only worth about 10 years jail.
I say go for it, from the land of the Queensland people who jailed everyone from the deputy premier to the police commissioner to a number of other cabinet ministers, the odd public servant or two.
Ah, so that’s how all the sports facilities in Mundaring were magically upgraded at pretty much the same time. I knew the shire couldn’t have afforded all of that.
Of course “the shire” couldn’t have afforded it – but “we” could. And overwhelming majority of us don’t even live there.
It is a bit like having the Brisbane City Council’s mayor announce that they have received federal grant money which they have spent and now the second round of funding is open for applications.
No one was notified of the process of applications for the first round of grants. Another instance of we tax payers subsidizing the repurposing of open green space into city car parking, which we residents are not happy about.
Shire of Mundaring was a particularly efficient target within Hasluck, as it’s the only LGA that entirely falls within the seat (Swan and Kalamunda are split with other seats besides Hasluck). When you also realise that state representation is more fraught – three seats joined at a spot less than 1km from Mundaring town centre, with the demographic centre of each a long way away – you can see why it could be a pork barreling target.
You don’t think I actually approve of this pork barreling just because I live there? It’s a danger to democracy, and now I shall be reminded of that every time I drive along Great Eastern Highway past the tennis courts.