The Senate has passed a motion directing Bridget McKenzie to appear before a select committee investigating the sports grants imbroglio no later than 12 February to answer questions about her administration of the scheme.
McKenzie had earlier declined to appear before the committee in response to a request that she make herself available in the first week of February.
In correspondence seen by Guardian Australia, the former sport minister said in order to appear, she would require “the provision of a statement of matters expected to be dealt with during the witnesses’s appearance” and added the matters would need to go beyond the issues addressed in her written submission.
McKenzie told the committee the request to appear is “unprecedented” and noted “there has never been an occasion where the Senate had ordered a senator who was not a minister to appear before a committee”.
But McKenzie told the committee chair Anthony Chisholm she would continue to “cooperate with the requests of the Senate select committee”.
Separately, the current sport minister Richard Colbeck has told the committee McKenzie’s ability to “assist with information is limited as she does not have access to documentation from her time as minister for sport”.
With parliament entering its final two sitting days for 2020, Labor moved a motion on Wednesday afternoon with support from the Greens and the crossbench directing McKenzie to appear before the committee no later than 12 February to answer questions about her role in the allocation of grants under the community sport infrastructure grant program.
The motion noted: “As the former minister for sport, senator Mckenzie has evidence essential to the committee’s inquiry into the administration and award of funding” under the program.
The Senate tussle follows a government-dominated parliamentary committee earlier this week calling on Sport Australia to clarify the legality of grants made during the sports rorts controversy.
The parliamentary inquiries were triggered by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) excoriating the Coalition’s administration of the program in January.
The ANAO triggered a political storm at the beginning of the year by finding the government awarded $100m in sport grants that were not assessed on their merits in order to favour their “targeted” seats at the May 2019 election.
McKenzie resigned from the frontbench in February. She lost her ministry because she did not disclose she was a member of a gun club which received close to $36,000 from the grants scheme, not because of the handling of the grants program.
In its scathing assessment of the administration of the program, the ANAO also sent up a flare about the legality of the grant making, noting it was “not evident to the ANAO what the legal authority was” for McKenzie to approve grants.
Independent legal experts have identified a number of legal issues with the CSIG program, including that there may be no constitutional power for the federal government to give sports grants and that McKenzie failed to formally direct Sport Australia to substitute her decisions for its own.
Lawyers for a tennis club denied a grant under the $100m program have launched a legal challenge against Sport Australia and McKenzie’s administration of the scheme, arguing that Sport Australia “took direction” from the government and as a result grants “were not made on merit” but rather “nakedly political grounds”.
Parliament’s joint committee of public accounts and audit committee (JCPAA) examined the controversial awarding of funding this week and noted aspects of the administration of the scheme “did not satisfy public and community expectations”.
The chair of the JCPAA, Liberal MP Lucy Wicks, on Monday also acknowledged “the question raised by the auditor general regarding the legal basis for decision making”.
The committee recommended Sport Australia “seek legal advice to clarify the authority, duty and roles of the minister for sport and the Australia Sports Commission and report back to the committee the basis on which office holders in those roles can make decisions in future grants programs”.
Sport Australia has six months to respond.
