Mr KELVIN THOMSON (3:35 PM) —What has been most disappointing about today is that the Prime Minister has bound himself to the maladministration of the Regional Partnerships program by Minister Kelly and Minister Lloyd. In so doing, he has made himself party to that inadequate piece of explanation that the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads produced when he snuck into the House at eight o'clock last night. In particular, the minister claimed that the member for Dobell had announced this project on 1 July 2004, implying that that was the first occasion on which this had happened. In fact, that is not true. The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday, 9 June in an article by Ben Sharkey:

That is very precise.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER —The member for Dobell is out of his seat.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Any member on either side of this House who proposed to go out to their electorate and promise that there was an amount of $680,000 earmarked for a particular program would go to a minister or, in our case, to a shadow minister, and to the Expenditure Review Committee and would go through all those sorts of processes; otherwise, you would run the risk of being left high and dry. I cannot think of a single member on either side of the House who would be so bold as to simply walk out to their electorate and say their party or their government or their opposition was committed to a project without having sounded out somebody, without having sought some kind of official approval. Yet the member for Dobell told the Daily Telegraph on 8 June—it was reported on 9 June—that this $680,000 had been earmarked for a dredging program under the Regional Partnerships program. He was very specific in saying that that approval had been given. The question is: to whom did the member for Dobell talk? Did he talk to Minister Kelly? If not, did he talk to someone else?

When we asked Minister Kelly questions in the chamber today, seeking to get to this point, the Prime Minister thought better of it. He took the question and, in so doing, was party to the same sort of misleading that Minister Lloyd engaged in last night, implying that the first time this had been announced was on 1 July. What this House needs to know is the answer to this question: what conversations took place between the member for Dobell and other government personnel, such as the Minister for Veterans' Affairs? The Prime Minister should be taking an interest in this matter. Instead of seeking to cover up for his ministers, as he did today, and accept their version of events, he should be asking himself: how did it happen that one of my members of parliament could go out and announce a Regional Partnerships program grant before the Wyong Shire Council had even met to consider the application, much less lodge the application?

Last night the minister snuck into the chamber to give what he claimed was a response to the questions raised yesterday by the opposition concerning Tumbi Creek. I want to take the House through his response in some detail. At paragraph 6 of his statement he claimed:

That is wrong. The council report released on 3 June is a preliminary report. Just three paragraphs were devoted to the selected option. The selected option was ranked third out of a number of options based on a weighting of relevant assessment factors. The selected option involved opening a new channel. The two preferred options—which were based on the preliminary assessment by the council officers, the council engineer—involved reopening a previous channel and cost half as much. All the options presented to council were, in the council officers' own words:

require further investigations of the site ...

be subject to a full environmental assessment ...

require referral to the various approving authorities prior to gaining consent to proceed.

The fact is that this is not an option which was supported by the council officers themselves. It was ranked third.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Indeed, we are supporting the engineer's view of this project. It was given a low priority by the local area consultative committee, supposedly this government's primary provider of independent advice on the Regional Partnerships scheme. Let me quote the project officer of the Central Coast Area Consultative Committee, John Presland, who said:

Paragraph 6 of the minister's statement last night is plain wrong. Paragraph 7 contradicts departmental advice. In his statement, Minister Lloyd said:

His own department told the Senate that this application was first lodged on 24 June. I understand today that the department has hastily sent something off to the Senate inquiry saying, `Whoops, we got it wrong. It was lodged on the 10th, not the 24th.' You have got to wonder what sort situation we have when the department is misleading a Senate inquiry on the Regional Partnerships program. Paragraph 10, as I have indicated previously, is plain wrong. The minister says:

The fact is that he was reported by the Daily Telegraph on 9 June as having committed that money and having earmarked $680,000—$748,000 when you include the GST—for a dredging program. Paragraph 13 states:

That contradicts departmental advice. The department has provided advice to the Senate regional funding inquiry that a second application was lodged by Wyong Shire Council on 11 July. No reference to this grant application is made in Wyong Shire Council minutes and a report to council on 14 July refers only to the decision at the 9 June meeting to seek $680,000 from both the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments. Similarly, paragraph 14 contradicts departmental advice concerning timing. Paragraph 17 states:

Again, that is plain wrong. Mr Hallett did not seek advice from the department on the implications of the flushing of the creek. He told the department what his expectations were. He made very clear that he required a clear statement from the department for Wyong council that the original commitment was non-negotiable. There was no question of asking there.

Paragraph 26 of the minister's advice last night says the advice `would have been easily obtained by the Leader of the Opposition'. Again, that is wrong. That transcript does not contain a report by the Wyong Shire Council director of engineering; instead it is the disjointed remarks of the director accompanying a photo presentation. The report is not noted in the Wyong Shire Council minutes of 24 November. It is not known who transcribed that presentation or produced that transcript. Even worse, the statement issued by the minister last night ignores the fact that there was a direction to the department by Mr Hallett seeking to explicitly massage an outcome that suited the political interests of the member for Dobell. It said nothing about whether the minister had authorised the request and nothing about whether he had authorised the release of departmental advice by Mr Hallett to the minister, to Wyong Shire Council and to the member for Dobell. It did not deal with Mr Hallett's warning to the member for Dobell and Wyong shire councillors that Wyong officials should keep their counsel on the true state of the creek in order to obtain the full grant. So the minister's statement is utterly inadequate in a whole range of respects.

The Tumbi Creek reek only deepened when we came across a further email—an email from Councillor Bob Graham, Deputy Mayor and former Liberal MP, to Kerry Yates, the general manager—saying:

The expression `Councillor Hallett' is obviously an ironic expression—the sort of expression one might use for an interfering busybody. It makes it plain that the councillors did feel under pressure. He says, `I don't want to lose any of the promised money'. I guess none of us would. So he felt under pressure from `Councillor Hallett' as to how this matter was to be handled. This email, which the opposition has released today, gives the lie to those claims coming from the government that councillors and council officers were not under pressure as a result of the emails they received from Minister Lloyd's office. It absolutely blows out of the water these claims that the council was not being put under pressure or did not feel under pressure.

Let me conclude by returning to the heart of the opposition's allegations and our concern about what amounted to a proposal to defraud the Commonwealth—that is, the statement in the email from Mr Hallett advising the Wyong officials to keep their counsel on this matter. The minister would say nothing about it to the parliament last night, but he said on TV today that it was a poorly worded email and that the staff member had been counselled. I invite members to reflect on the concept of `poorly worded'. I can imagine Cain telling God, `You know what I said about Abel—am I my brother's keeper?—well, that was poorly worded; I could have done better.' Poorly worded might be Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, `Gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.' That is poorly worded. What we have here is something which is poorly worded because it has exposed an adviser in Minister Lloyd's office who would stop at nothing to make sure this grant proceeded—one with a manic determination to get his own way over this grant. Andrew Peacock once said that about Malcolm Fraser; perhaps that was poorly worded too.

If this Prime Minister's ministerial code of conduct is to mean anything—and it has become a joke and a laughing stock over the last six years, rusting away in some little shed at the back of the Lodge—it is time he took that ministerial code of conduct out and used it. Ministerial standards have now fallen so low that a ministerial adviser who urges that information be withheld from his own department in order that taxpayers' funds can be spent, whether they are needed or not, is just counselled. It is hard to imagine a time when standards of ministerial accountability have ever been lower. I can assure those opposite that the opposition will continue to pursue this and the other regional rorts—and they are legion—over the coming weeks and months to ensure that proper public accountability for the expenditure of taxpayers' money is returned to this nation.