Calls for greater transparency in grant funding arrangements

Independent Member for Wagga Wagga, Dr Joe McGirr, has joined a call for greater transparency after non-government MPs were revealed to have been left out of grant arrangements in their own seats.

Dr McGirr has this week joined members of Labor and the crossbench in calling for an overhaul of government grants.

Documents released under parliamentary order have shown that in non-Coalition seats, local MPs were bypassed in the assessment of grants.

Emails from the office of then-deputy premier John Barilaro in 2019 showed Liberal and National MPs assessed and announced successful applications for grants through the Stronger Country Communities Fund in non-government seats.

Dr McGirr is deeply disappointed that government backbenchers, often with only tenuous links to a seat, were able to make decisions on what grants would be successful, while the sitting MP was frozen out.

“Our taxpayers’ money should be shared in our communities in a fair and transparent way,” he said.

“Instead, what we have here is decisions being made with the involvement of party members not directly elected by the people of that electorate.

“I had understood and expected that these would be assessed through the bureaucracy, without political bias.

“Basically, the local member is bypassed.  They’re not even taken into account.

“The government is not being transparent in the way these funds are allocated and it has to stop. It’s not right and it’s not fair.”