Denial is not just a river in Egypt. The government continues to argue that there was no wrongdoing in the sports rorts saga. On Wednesday morning the (temporarily safe at least) Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack told ABC television that Bridget McKenzie did a wonderful job carving up the sports grants. That is, the allocations that the Auditor General said breached guidelines and included partisan favouritism. The same grants which the minister’s office colour coded according to partisan complexion.
McCormack literally congratulated her. What can anyone say about that attitude?
In the same interview McCormack disputed the notion of bias in the process by citing the report Scott Morrison’s former political chief of staff (now head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet) produced over the weekend, claiming that it found “no bias”.
How would anyone know?
The Prime Minister – unbelievably – refuses to release the report, only quoting from it selectively. Even in those selective quotes nowhere did Scott Morrison reference the report saying there was “no bias”.
One assumes if it said so clearly that there was no bias whatsoever Morrison’s cherry picking would have included such commentary?
We will never get to see the report which (apparently) contradicts the Auditor General’s report, because it has been declared a cabinet document, making it impossible to use Freedom of Information laws to access it. That is something else the media should be up in arms about, given the FOI campaigns which have been so prominently featured in papers like ours.
And in the same ABC interview McCormack used the line that all grants approved by the then sports minister were “eligible”. I remind readers I am eligible to play rugby for the Wallabies if they come calling. Or to open the batting for the Australian cricket team (in all forms of the game).
So what? It doesn’t mean I should be selected.
The most galling part about the sports rorts saga is the fact the government hopes it will just fade from view, without any action to fix the pork barrelling. Such thumbing of one’s nose at our checks and balances in the political system represents the worst the Canberra bubble can throw up.
All without any admission that wrongdoing occurred. Without any acknowledgment that the Auditor General is a more independent reviewer of what transpired than is Morrison’s former political chief of staff. Donald Trump wouldn’t be so brazen. Well, maybe not.
Fortunately there is a senate inquiry to come when it comes to sports rorts, and Labor no doubt will use Question Time to press the issue as well.
There is already more than enough on the public record to condemn the misuse of $100m of taxpayers funds. But with evidence of the Prime Minister’s office being involved, written and source based, and other grants programs perhaps mirroring the pork barrelling beginning to emerge, this issue should not go away any time soon.
Given that the government remains in denial, the media and the public, and indeed the opposition and the cross bench, absolutely should not let this issue fade from view.
To do so would be to let our political culture be further eroded by an attitude that accountability doesn’t matter.
Peter van Onselen is Political Editor for Network 10 and professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University
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