DOCUMENTS

Senator McCARTHY (Northern Territory—Minister for Indigenous Australians) (10:21): I note that this issue has been dealt with extensively in question time and that the orders Senator McKenzie is referring to have been responded to. As the response to the order set out, the order refers to commitments made in the 2025 election. Australians elected us on the promise of delivering our commitments, and we are delivering with proper process.

The government is delivering 2025 election commitments through a one-off, closed, non-competitive, grants program known as the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program. This approach follows the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles, which were updated to take account of the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit inquiry into Commonwealth grants administration.

The Commonwealth grants guidelines explicitly allow closed, non-competitive, grant processes and assert that better-practice non-competitive grants should name eligible applicants and provide information on how eligibility is determined. Program guidelines for the MLCIP, which have been publicly available for over a year, make clear who can apply for funding and the eligibility and assessment criteria they must meet to successfully receive funding.

The guidelines clearly state that applications which do not meet these benchmarks will not be considered value for money and will not be awarded funding. Ministers also do not make decisions on applications in their electorate. These decisions are made by an alternative minister.

I would reiterate that this attendance motion relates to orders for the production of documents that have been responded to. OPD 680 was responded to within hours of when it was due. OPD 679 was responded to within the day.

Both were provided before consideration of the compliance motion. It's astonishing, though, that Senator McKenzie has ordered a half-hour debate in relation to the administration of a grants program—Senator McKenzie, who is perhaps best known for her administration of a certain grants program under the former coalition government. We all remember sports rorts.

We all remember the colour-coded spreadsheets. And we remember which minister was making the decisions at the time. In the wake of those controversies, the ANAO and the Auditor-General could not have been clearer in their advice.

As the Auditor-General said in 2023, when it comes to election commitments, you still need to have a grants program; you still need guidelines, assessment processes and all those things that are requirements on the bureaucracy and on decision-makers to go through, in getting an appropriate decision made. The expectation under the rules is that you set up a program, set up a program objective, set the criteria and the guidelines for the program, and then you undertake actions under those things.

This is precisely what we have done. The program Senator McKenzie oversaw did not meet that test; it was found to fall far short of the expectations of the ANAO and of the public. We publicly made election commitments, we took them to an election and now we are fulfilling them, as the Australian public expect.

We have gone about delivering them in a transparent way, in a way that follows the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles, with public program guidelines, including eligibility and assessment criteria. Senator McKenzie might not like it, but this is the way you deliver election commitments appropriately.