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Who says the Morrison government didn’t support the arts?

When Guy Sebastian announced his embarrassment at being used as a “prop” in the announcement of the minuscule and sluggishly administered COVID-19 rescue package for the sector, little did he know there was a very specific branch of the creative arts that then-prime minister Scott Morrison was extremely keen to see flourish: politicians’ wives teaching pottery.

The Australian‘s Sarah Elks has a bomb exclusive this morning revealing Yolonde Entsch, the LNP candidate for the crucial state seat of Cairns and wife of federal Liberal veteran Warren Entsch, ­received a $213,725 grant from the Morrison government’s Indigenous languages and arts program to teach pottery in a remote Queensland Aboriginal community.

To answer your first question, no, she is not Indigenous, and to answer your second, no, she was not required to declare her relationship with Warren during the application process.

It got us thinking: what was the total bill of spending under the Morrison government that trailed a faintly dodgy scent? Let’s punch the numbers in.

‘Sports rorts’

In early 2020, it was revealed that Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and her office took control of the $100 million Community Sport Infrastructure Program grants process and directed it to marginal seats in the lead-up to the 2019 election. This led to absurdities such as golf clubs being given $190,000 to build a new foyer and install a lift, while football clubs without lights or women’s change rooms got knocked back.

Cost: $102.5 million

‘Car park rorts’

The urban congestion fund was a “national commuter car park fund” worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Its allocations were heavily influenced by a list that staffers in then-infrastructure minister Alan Tudge’s office had drawn up of the top 20 marginal seats ahead of the 2019 election.

The 47 car parks funded under the program were all chosen on the advice of MPs, other ministers or state Liberal counterparts and not a single recommendation by the Department of Infrastructure made it into their final list.

Cost: $660 million

Building better regions fund

In 2022, the Australian National Audit Office found that 65% of a $1.1 billion set of grants under the building better regions fund — mostly decided by a National Party-controlled committee, which rejected departmental advice — should not have been awarded under a fair and open process. By staggering coincidence, they all went to National Party and Liberal electorates.

Cost: $747.5 million 

Inland rail

Oh you thought the above was bad? It’s a rounding error compared with inland rail, the astonishing blowouts of which has prompted the question (and not just in Crikey): is inland rail the biggest waste of public money in history? The 1700km project has blown out to $31.4 billion. As Bernard Keane wrote back when the cost (initially estimated at $9.3 billion) was a trifling $20 billion:

It’s a massive white elephant. Except that’s a smear on pachyderms. To call it a dog is to demean our canine friends. The inland rail line won’t just lie there rusting in the countryside. Its whole purpose is to subsidise coal exports by offering below-cost rail transport for coal miners — 35% below cost, according to the agency building it, the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC). 

… You’d think a $20 billion subsidy to the Coalition’s coalminer donors would be of interest to journalists, but evidently not.

Cost: $31.4 billion

In that context, Yolonde Entsch’s pottery classes are behind-the-sofa-cushions money. And all of this says nothing of, say, the salaries shelled out to Liberal mates (some without legal qualifications) on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Fair Work Commission, or the money paid for the CEO-stacked National COVID-19 Commission to suggest a “gas-led recovery“.

But hey, at least we got 50% back on the $347,000 Scott Cam was to receive for all those posts, and Stuart Robert did eventually pay back the $37,995 he somehow managed to accrue in internet fees.