Senator CARR (3:23 PM) —While the government refuses to explain why and how it came to hand-pick 16 projects out of the Federation Fund moneys and why it did so in breach of the clear criteria that it had established and agreed to with the department, the opposition will maintain its charges that this program was rorted. We are quite clearly seeing an attempt by this government to hide from public scrutiny a shameless use of public funds for quite clear electoral purposes. An attempt is being made by this government to hide the fact that 16 projects were hand-picked by government ministers in such a way as to allow for the maximum political impact in support of coalition marginal seats during the last election.

This is a policy which this government has pursued quite clearly in total disregard for the long-held convention `that significant initiatives should be announced in advance of the caretaker period in order to avoid controversy'. That is the sentiment that is expressly stated in the caretaker conventions which have long been established within this parliament. This is quite clearly a breach by this government. The government has attempted to hide its contempt for the Auditor-General's guidelines.

I further allege that this government has sought to circumvent an FOI request which would have allowed the parliament to get to the bottom of what is quite clearly a shonky grants process. What we have before us is the motivation of the government. Senators are entitled to ask questions about that. It is my contention that this government was under considerable pressure in the last election. It was quite prepared to use public resources at its disposal to pork-barrel its way out of trouble.

In particular, we note that one of the ministers concerned with the administration of this program, Senator Alston, happened to be the campaign director for the Liberal Party in the state of Victoria. It was not above his consideration to have press conferences at the Liberal Party campaign headquarters at Nauru House in Melbourne. For instance, on 8 September 1998 he stated quite explicitly that the Liberal Party was in a very tight election and that all stops had to be pulled out to make sure that people understood the stark choices, and so on, before them. The stark choices to which he referred included the use of funds under the Federation Fund program. The transcript of that interview is publicly available.

We have to understand the simple facts behind this matter. Mr Fischer blew the gaff on this government when he confirmed on ABC TV during its election night coverage that a lot of policy was in the pipeline and that specific projects are always held back for announcement during an election campaign. The simple facts are that, in the months leading up to the calling of the election on 30 August last year, government ministers approved $198 million in grants under the Natural Heritage Trust, $170 million in Federation Fund major project grants, and $70 million in Federation Fund Cultural and Heritage Projects—a total of $438 million. In the course of the election campaign itself, the government announced $198 million in grants under the Natural Heritage Trust, $317 million in Federation Fund major projects and $41 million in terms of the Federation Fund Cultural and Heritage Projects.

It is quite apparent that there has been considerable political interference in the allocation of government moneys to the Federation Fund projects. It is quite apparent to us that secrecy surrounding why the decisions were made and the failure of the government to release publicly the documentation which it alleged it sent to the department indicates that the government has a considerable amount to hide in this regard. I ask the simple question: why should such secrecy surround the expenditure of such significant sums of money?

Some 16—or more than 25 per cent—of the 60 successful projects in the cultural fund were chosen by ministers who were obviously content to override departmental advice and to contravene the Auditor-General's guidelines in pursuit of votes. Quite clearly, that is the criterion that was primarily in their minds when it came to the allocation of moneys for this project. The department presented a list of 114 projects and 16 of these projects were below the cut-off line. (Time expired)