{"id":476966,"date":"2020-02-14T13:58:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T13:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmatilda.com\/?p=131437"},"modified":"2020-02-14T13:58:01","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T13:58:01","slug":"just-when-you-thought-the-sports-rorts-affair-couldnt-get-any-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/02\/14\/just-when-you-thought-the-sports-rorts-affair-couldnt-get-any-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Just When You Thought the Sports Rorts Affair Couldn\u2019t Get Any Worse\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u2018Grant from Auditing\u2019 has dropped \u2018Scotty from Marketing\u2019 right in it. And the net result is a stench of corruption enveloping the Morrison government. Ben Eltham explains.<\/strong><\/p>\n Summer rains finally fell on large parts of New South Wales this week. They didn\u2019t fall everywhere, and much of inland Australia is still in drought, but enough rain fell where it was needed to allow weary fire authorities to announce that the\u00a0New South Wales bushfires were finally contained<\/a>.<\/p>\n For different reasons, Scott Morrison has also had a difficult summer, so the Prime Minister would no doubt have been pleased the bushfire emergency he so badly mishandled is now receding. With Parliament back and the serious matter of COVID-19 Coronavirus to attend to, Morrison could be forgiven for thinking that February would be the month where the government could regain the political initiative.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not happening, because the government finds itself mired in a series of corruption scandals.<\/p>\n The key issue, as it has been for weeks now, is the\u00a0sports rorts affair<\/a>. As we now know, roughly $100 million in sports grants were distributed in a completely corrupt manner by former Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie before the 2019 federal election.<\/p>\n The scandal blew up after the National Audit Office released a\u00a0devastating report into the orgy of pork barrelling<\/a>.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s initial response to the Audit was to try and downplay it: a variation of the classic \u201cnothing to see here, folks\u201d line. Morrison himself argued many times that\u00a0no rules had been broken<\/a>\u00a0and that all the projects funded in McKenzie\u2019s dodgy process were eligible.<\/p>\n