Government pork-barrelling using sports grants is nothing new. Labor’s Ros Kelly made it an art-form in 1994, but at least had the sense to wipe the evidence off her great big whiteboard.

What is astonishing about the latest sports-rorts affair is its brazenness, culminating in the assertion that "no rules were broken". The public seems largely to have swallowed this heroic assertion. But is it true?