One word sums up the government’s laughable excuse for sport rorts scandal

Scott Morrison and his ministers keep repeating the same word as they try to spin their way out of the sport rorts scandal. It’s an absurd excuse.

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Listen to enough government MPs trying to spin their way out of the sport rorts scandal and you will detect a common theme.

Let’s run through some examples. Here is Bridget McKenzie, the minister at the centre of the scandal, speaking to reporters on January 16.

“No rules were broken. Every single one of those 684 projects that were funded were eligible for funding under the guidelines,” she said.

Here’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in an interview with Sunrise on January 20.

“Every single one of the projects approved was eligible, every rule followed in relation to the program,” he said.

Next up is Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, during a doorstop interview on January 21.

“All those projects were eligible,” said Mr Frydenberg.

“The projects were awarded to eligible applications, and those applications were made in the normal process.

“No rules were broken, all the projects were eligible, the money went into these sporting communities across electorates, across the country, including in many Labor electorates.”

Here is Attorney-General Christian Porter, speaking to 6PR radio on January 22.

“All of these projects were eligible. All of them,” said Mr Porter.

And this is what the Prime Minister said in response to questions at the National Press Club yesterday.

“What the government was doing was supporting local community infrastructure projects, all of which were eligible under the program, all of which will make a difference in the community,” said Mr Morrison.

You get the picture. The government is fixated on the fact that every beneficiary of the $100 million sport grants program was “eligible” for funding.

RELATED: PM grilled on sport rorts scandal at National Press Club

How good is eligibility? Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

That is its defence for hijacking taxpayers’ money – your money – to repurpose for its own political benefit, shamelessly screwing over dozens of local sport clubs in the process.

It’s an excuse so laughable, so idiotic, that you have to give Mr Morrison and his ministers some credit for managing to spit it out with a straight face.

As a member of parliament, Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly is eligible to be prime minister. That doesn’t mean he should get the job.

The Pirate Party is eligible for your vote at every federal election, but that doesn’t make it a good choice.

Last year’s Rebel Wilson film The Hustle is eligible to win an Oscar, but given its abysmal 14 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it probably shouldn’t.

And I’m eligible to play international football for New Zealand, but I’m obviously never going to, because I can’t even kick with my right foot and the team is selected on merit.

That is how the sport grants program was supposed to work. An independent body, Sport Australia, ranked thousands of applicants based on merit, assigning each one a score out of 100.

The government, through Ms McKenzie, ignored that advice. She had her own criteria, which had nothing to do with which applications were the most deserving.

Overruling hundreds of Sport Australia’s recommendations, she decided to hand out cash to whichever projects just so happened to be in seats the Coalition wanted to protect or target at the election.

We know this, because the Auditor-General’s report said so.

And we know it because, as the ABC first reported earlier this week, Ms McKenzie’s office was shameless enough to develop a spreadsheet which colour-coded each application according to the party that held its electorate.

Forgive me for labouring a painfully obvious point, but it’s one every single government MP is dutifully pretending not to comprehend – there was no valid reason for Ms McKenzie’s office to compile that information. It had no bearing whatsoever on the merit of the applications.

But Ms McKenzie had an election to win.

RELATED: Colour-coded spreadsheet exposes $100 million rort

Bridget McKenzie. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

So the Gippsland Ranges Roller Derby, whose application received a sky-high rating of 98 out of 100 from Sport Australia, got nothing.

Meanwhile, Pakenham Football Club received the maximum possible grant of $500,000, despite scoring a miserable 50 out of 100.

I don’t need to tell you which of those two projects was in a marginal electorate.

The Auditor-General exposed the full extent of the rort, identifying hundreds of snubbed projects that would have been approved if the process were based purely on merit, not politics.

“There were 417 applications that were approved for funding with assessment scores below the threshold that would have applied if decisions had reflected the assessed merit of the competing eligible applications,” it found.

“The significant majority of these applications (71 per cent of the number of applications and 74 per cent of the funding) were in Coalition electorates or ‘targeted’ electorates.”

Each application rejected when it was above the threshold is a victim of the government’s misconduct.

Each took hours and hours of work from regular Australians, who wasted their time polishing pointless grant requests thinking the most deserving would be rewarded.

They were deceived. And astonishingly, the government’s response now is not to apologise, but to pretend it did nothing wrong.

The Auditor-General's report mapped out which applications were approved, and which missed out.

This graph shows application approvals from round three of the program. Highest merit scores are on the left, lowest on the right. Focus on the blue bars, which show applications not recommended by Sport Australia, but approved by Ms McKenzie anyway.

Mr Morrison has his department secretary investigating whether Ms McKenzie violated ministerial standards by giving $36,000 to a clay-shooting club without declaring she was a member of it.

He has also asked the Attorney-General, Mr Porter, to examine whether Ms McKenzie actually had the legal authority to personally approve the grants.

But at the Press Club yesterday, Mr Morrison stubbornly defended the $100 million scheme as a whole – once again trotting out that ridiculous, meaningless talking point about all the successful applicants being “eligible”.

“I think it’s important to note that the Auditor-General did not find there were ineligible projects that were funded under this scheme, nor did he say rules had been broken. There was a ministerial authority to make decisions in this matter and that’s what was exercised,” said the Prime Minister.

He said a number of “hardworking local communities” had benefited from the grants program and all the projects were “worthy”.

“There will also always be criticisms that are made about the decisions that are taken. What matters is on the ground is whether the projects are making a difference.”

ABC reporter Andrew Probyn, who broke the story about Ms McKenzie’s colour-coded spreadsheet earlier in the week, tried to bring him back to the core of the matter – the worthier applicants who were dudded because their electorate wasn’t important enough.

“What do you say to the hundreds of community groups, not-for-profits, councils who spent a lot of time putting together their grant applications, and did so thinking that the process would be one that was going to be devised by merit, as opposed to political advantage?” Probyn asked.

“Andrew, I will put your editorial to one side, and your commentary on it. That is your view, and that is what you have put forward,” Mr Morrison replied.

“What the government was doing was supporting local community infrastructure projects, all of which were eligible under the program, all of which will make a difference in the community, and there are always more.

“There are many, many worthy projects in this area, I agree with that. I will work with the Treasurer to see how we can better support even more projects in the future. On any grants program, however it is done, there will always be many applicants whose projects are very worthy and they’re unable to be accommodated by the budget we have set.”

Not a lot of sympathy in that answer, was there? And not even the slightest hint of shame.

I doubt it satisfied Cherry Gardens Ironbank Recreation Ground, for instance, whose project was “unable to be accommodated by the budget we have set” despite scoring 94 out of 100, while hundreds of lower-ranked proposals did get funded.

Rort? What rort? I don’t see any rort. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Of course, Mr Morrison couldn’t afford to show any shame, because that would require him to acknowledge fault. So he chose to deny the obvious.

“Are you suggesting that there was nothing wrong as a matter of principle in using public funds for your own private political interests?” asked The Guardian’s Sarah Martin.

“Well, I just reject the premise of the question. That is not why we did it,” Mr Morrison replied.

“Why did you do it?” Martin followed up.

“To support local communities with the sporting infrastructure that they need to bond together, to be cohesive and ensure that girls didn’t have to change out the back of the shed. You can have an editorial on it, if you like, you’re welcome to that. That’s not why I or the government did it,” he said.

“As a matter of principle, do you accept that it is wrong to use public funds for your own private political benefit?” Martin asked.

“That is not what the government has done,” the Prime Minister said.

Except that is what the government did. Ms McKenzie used taxpayers’ money for the private benefit of the Liberal and National parties. It’s right there, in the Auditor-General’s report, plain to see for anyone with a shred of common sense.

The victims of this rort – who were all “eligible” too, by the way – have already suffered enough disrespect. Now the government is compounding it by insulting their intelligence.

Are you satisfied with the government’s response to the scandal? Have your say in the comments or on Twitter | @SamClench