Liberal grants the bottom of the pork barrel

THE Telegraph’s revelations have now forced Mike Baird to order an “independent probity audit” to look at Community Building Partnerships scheme.

Liberal member for East Hills, Glenn Brookes.

ROS Kelly was a Keating minister who resigned in 1994 over the “whiteboard affair”, in which she doled out a program of sport grants that favoured marginal Labor electorates using a “great big whiteboard”.

I looked up the scandal ­involving the former federal sports minister this week as I was considering the state government’s Community Building Partnerships scheme. But the CBP scheme does not have the same ­degree of looseness as the whiteboard saga. In some ways it is perhaps even looser.

That is certainly suggested by the grants handed out through the Liberal member for East Hills, Glenn Brookes.

Brookes had two grants worth $28,000 approved for the Australian Multicultural Christian Society, run by convicted money launderer Carl Trad, who is alleged to have helped Brookes during last year’s election campaign.

One grant was $10,000 for a homelessness food van, which Trad has conceded he used to buy a bus instead, which he says is used by Christian groups.

Another grant, for $18,000, which has now been frozen by the Premier, was for a shadecloth for East Hills Public School. It certainly seems a peculiar way to go about applying for a grant for a school. Which brings us to another peculiar set of grants.

The La’u Samoa society was awarded $20,000 to build a shadecloth awning at St Christopher’s school at ­Panania last year. It emerged Brookes and his former electorate officer, Jim Daniel, had gone to the school and introduced the ­society, saying they could apply for the grant on their behalf. Is that really the way this scheme is supposed to work?

It produced a ­reaction from the church next door, with Father Maurice Thompson writing to his parishioners: “It is beyond me how a group ... could apply for a grant on behalf of our parish and school community, our Catholic Samoan community, without any of us having any knowledge about it.”

And that’s not the end of it for La’u Samoa, which helped Brookes during his election campaign. Brookes has awarded the group grants worth $58,000 over two years.

All up the group, whose website lists its address as Bankstown Trotting Club, has been awarded $102,800 in grants in electorates ­including Campbelltown, ­Lakemba and Cabramatta.

Ros Kelly hugs daughter Jessie in 1994 after announcing her resignation from politics, with THAT whiteboard in the background / Picture: Ray Strange

La’u Samoa’s president, Alaalatoa Emani, has ­defended the grants, which included money for barbecues and church equipment, ­although he could not tell us last week where the equipment was. Its website says it was started by six friends in 2002 and in 2014 had 40 paid-up, registered members.

The Premier’s Department works with local members to administer the grants.

One wonders how it could give so much, one third of an MP’s annual allocation, to one organisation. The CBP scheme was set up by Labor in the 2009 state budget. It allowed each of the 93 lower house MPs to grant $300,000 a year to local sporting and community groups and suited Labor at the time because they had more seats and therefore more cash to pork barrel. The Daily Telegraph’s revelations have now forced Premier Mike Baird to order an “independent probity audit” to look at the scheme.

Electoral authorities are already investigating Brookes, who is a member of the Premier’s parliamentary ethics committee, over allegations raised in parliament by Labor MP Lynda Voltz that he won his seat because Jim Daniel distributed anonymous leaflets claiming Labor candidate and Council of Civil Liberties boss Cameron Murphy was a “paedophile lover”. Daniel and Brookes deny the allegations.

In a happy coincidence, guess who in 2012 was involved in a coup to try to take over Bankstown Trotting Club, where La’u Samoa is based? None other than Trad and Daniel.

Some MPs defend the CBP scheme, saying bureaucrats can’t know what is best for their communities. But how confident can we be of politicians handling such money? And how confident can we be of the inquiry into the scheme Baird has ordered? It’s time for Baird to act.