Assistant Minister for Customs, Community Safety and Multicultural Affairs Jason Wood has followed the lead of his former superior Peter Dutton in rorting the Safer Communities Fund.
Mr Wood was responsible for the Safer Communities Fund Round 5 Infrastructure Stream which provided $31 million in grants to councils, schools, pre-schools or community organisations facing security risks due to racial or religious intolerance.
Hundreds of projects applied for funding under the grant program and community safety experts recommended that the Assistant Minister fund 80 applications ranked highest on an expert merit assessment.
Following the example of his former boss, the then Home Affairs Minister, Mr Wood ignored the community safety experts’ advice, cut funding for the 80 highest ranked projects by $3.1 million and used the money to fund nine projects that the experts recommended not be funded.
Five of these projects had been assessed as unsuitable by the community safety experts because they failed to score 50 per cent on the 100-point merit assessment.
Another three were ruled ineligible to be funded under the program.
Of the three ineligible projects Mr Wood decided to fund, two were grants for security cameras on non-existent buildings, and another was a grant to engage security guards for a music and cultural festival.
It’s a disgrace that Mr Wood has rorted a program designed to help organisations facing security risks due to racial or religious intolerance.
It’s very troubling that his justification for approving the three ineligible projects was that he had visited the organisations, something that the community safety experts concluded would raise probity issues.
Let’s be clear: Mr Wood is using money from the proceeds of crime to fund his pet projects rather than the projects that would contribute most to public safety.
With his intervention, Mr Wood is actually reducing community safety.
The Prime Minister and his Ministers must front up and explain why they think it’s okay to rort these important grant programs and treat taxpayers’ money like its Liberal Party money.