A former Nationals candidate received a $300,000 federal government grant under the Coalition’s regional jobs scheme, and then appeared in an advertisement spruiking the program in the lead-up to the May election.
John Lever, a Rockhampton businessman who runs the Koorana Crocodile Farm in central Queensland, received the grant to build crocodile-rearing pens aimed at improving the quality and value of leather for export.
Lever ran for the Nationals in the 2001 and 2004 federal elections as the candidate for the seat of Capricornia, which is now held by the Nationals MP Michelle Landry.
In the run-up to this year’s election, Landry visited the farm with a cohort of LNP senators, including candidates Paul Scarr and Susan McDonald, to promote the grant, and filmed an advertisement with Lever talking up the $220m regional jobs and investment packages.
The RJIP program was the subject of a damning auditor general report released earlier this month, and has seen dozens of projects receive funding against the recommendations of the department.
According to the audit, ministers declined to fund 28% of grant applications recommended to them by officials, and approved 17% of applications that had not been recommended to them.
The grant to the crocodile farm, through the company Farnmont Pty Ltd, was announced in March 2018. However, the media event to promote the package took place 12 months later in March this year – just eight weeks before the election. Capricornia was the Coalition’s most marginal seat, held by Landry on a margin of just 0.6%.
Landry and Scarr both promoted the visit on their social media pages.
According to local media coverage at the time, the visit was to “check on the progress of the funding”, with Landry saying the project had “facilitated” eight jobs as the grant was spent and created three permanent jobs at the farm.
Guardian Australia reported on Monday that the top eight projects recommended for funding in another Queensland region based on the department’s merit-based scoring system were all rejected by the ministerial panel overseeing the scheme.
However, in the same region, two known political donors to the LNP were among those that successfully secured funding.
It is not known if the crocodile farm project was among those recommended by the department for funding, as the government is refusing to release the documentation underpinning the grant decisions.
Guardian Australia can also reveal that another federal government grant under the regional jobs and investment packages scheme went to a New South Wales south coast termite and building inspector to develop an online building course and app, which is yet to be delivered.
The $82,000 grant to Property Works Pty Ltd, trading as Surety Property, was made under the RJIP’s business innovation stream, with the project to “create an online course and app for buyers of properties and for those building for the first time”.
Under the guidelines for the grant, applicants were required to commit to being able to commence work within 12 weeks of the grant agreement being executed.
Applicants also needed to outline how many full-time jobs would be created and the level of net economic benefit the project would create for the region.
The Property Works director, Bruce Cohen, would not comment on the status of the project when contacted by Guardian Australia on Monday, saying it was a “private” matter.
“We are working with the government on it and I am not going to discuss it,” Cohen said.
According to the Surety Property website, the company is run by Cohen and his wife, Sharlene, with promotional material saying they are “building and termite specialists”.
Guardian Australia has reported on a host of other projects that have raised questions about the rigour of the application process, including another project in the south coast region of NSW that attempted to raise money through a fish-based cryptocurrency.
A Gilmore-based campervan company also won a grant while it was possibly trading insolvent, while in Queensland a ferry project that received a grant is losing money and unlikely to happen for two more years.
Labor is calling on the government to release details of which projects were approved against the advice of the department, and has asked parliament’s audit committee to delve into the scheme’s administration.
