Released under FOI laws sports rorts report show former Minister’s ‘significant shortcomings’

The release of the report into the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program, that the former LNP Coalition Government had sought to keep secret, included findings that were highly critical of the decision-making process behind the grants scheme and its “lack of transparency”.

The 2020 investigation by former Secretary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet department Phil Gaetjens found that then Federal Minister of Sport Bridget McKenzie displayed "some significant shortcomings" in her oversight of a grants program that later became known as the ‘sports rorts’ scandal.

With the former Federal Government having refused to release the Gaetjens Report, insisting it was a cabinet document, its release today under Freedom of Information provisions includes findings that are critical of the transparency of the grants program.

The report also levelled specific criticism at Senator McKenzie for awarding a grant to a gun club she was a member of - the issue that forced her resignation.

In 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison called in the then-head of the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, to review Senator McKenzie's handling of the sport grant program.

The investigation found “no evidence of the reasons that supported the minister’s final approvals” along with “other factors (that) had a material impact on the minister’s final approvals being different from Sport Australia’s own recommendations”.

The report also stated “this lack of transparency coupled with the significant divergences between projects recommended by Sport Australia and those approved by the minister has given rise to concerns about the decision making.

“Those submitting grant funding applications had, in my view, a right to more fully understand the basis on which the funding decisions were being made.”

Senator McKenzie, now the Nationals Deputy Leader, resigned from cabinet in early 2020 after Gaetjens finished the investigation. A summary of the Gaetjens report was published at the time but the full investigation was not released on the basis that it was a confidential cabinet document.

The investigation was launched after a damning Auditor General’s report found former sports minister McKenzie’s office overlooked sporting grant applications of merit in favour of those in marginal electorates.

However, Gaetjens did not find evidence of ‘pork barrelling’ in his report, noting “I can find no basis for the suggestion that political considerations were the primary determining factor in the minister’s decision to approve the grants.”

The investigation was highly critical of the discrepancy between the grants approved and those in the final list of recommended projects by Australian Sports Commission, which was then branded as Sport Australia.

It noted “I cannot reconcile such large variations in the final approval results compared to recommendations based on the published assessment criteria with the minister’s view that the published assessment criteria were the ‘key decision factor’.”

Image: Senator McKenzie at the Wangaratta Clay Target Club. Courtesy of the Nationals.