Attorney-General Christian Porter weighs legal basis for Bridget McKenzie sports grants
Christian Porter will scrutinise the legality of Bridget McKenzie’s handing-out of sports grants in key seats.
Attorney-General Christian Porter will scrutinise the legality of federal minister Bridget McKenzie’s handing-out of sports grants in key seats, as a leading constitutional law expert warns she “might be in strife”.
Government sources said it was likely Mr Porter would request legal advice from the government’s Solicitor-General, Stephen Donaghue, after a damning Australian National Audit Office report questioned whether Senator McKenzie had the legal authority as the then sports minister to approve the grants, which often favoured marginal and targeted electorates.
“The Auditor-General made comments concerning the legal basis for ministerial involvement in the relevant process,” Mr Porter said. “And given the lack of any conclusive view offered by the Auditor-General, the Prime Minister has sought further consideration of the issue, which I am attending to.”
Sport Australia, the government agency that administered the program and assessed applications, cited privacy reasons for refusing to release the details of nearly 1400 projects that lost out under the controversial $100m scheme.
Scott Morrison on Monday stood by Senator McKenzie, who has labelled calls for her resignation as “absolutely ridiculous” and argued “no rules were broken” because each of the 684 projects that received funding was eligible under the program’s guidelines.
The Auditor-General’s report into Senator McKenzie’s handling of grants found she had “no legal authority” to approve grants that were paid with Sport Australia money.
University of Sydney constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said the legislation overseeing Sport Australia’s independence muddied government claims that the law is ambiguous on whether Senator McKenzie was legally allowed to take over the grant approvals process.
“Sport Australia is in law an independent corporate body,” Professor Twomey said. “The legislation states the minister can give direction to Sport Australia, but it must be written and tabled in parliament. It doesn’t say that she can take over the process.
“There have been various cases before the High Court that say ministers need legislative authorisation to spend money and the law was pretty clear on the process here. Since the power to make the grants was conferred on Sport Australia, not the minister, she might be in strife.”
Professor Twomey also said there was another, even bigger constitutional question about whether governments of any stripes should be able to give out millions in grants to local groups.
Mr Morrison defended Senator McKenzie and said the fact that sports grants had gone out to safe Labor seats showed the process was not biased.
“I continue to support her and the reason I do is because she was delivering a program which has changed the future of local communities,” Mr Morrison told Radio 3AW.
“It’s hard to draw that absolute conclusion (that she was pork-barrelling) when more Labor seats got funding … one of those seats was Anthony Albanese’s seat. I think he was pretty confident of holding onto his seat.”