Dr Caralee McLiesh PSM
Auditor-General for Australia
Australian National Audit Office
GPO Box 707
CANBERRA ACT 2601

Dear Auditor-General

Urgent Review: Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program

I thank you for your letter of 8 September 2026 confirming that the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program (MLCIP) and the Supporting Multicultural Communities Program (SMCP) will be added as topics to the ANAO’s Annual Audit Work Program for 2026-27.

Unfortunately, media reporting subsequent to your letter just yesterday demands a new urgency with which the MLCIP must be audited.

What has been reported

On 9 September 2026, a national media outlet reported that the Prime Minister held an honorary membership of Marrickville Golf Club which had not been disclosed on his Register of Members’ Interests. Records of his interests dating back to his election in 1996 do not disclose either a paid or honorary membership of the club.

The club confirmed to the media that Mr Albanese was an honorary member, with the membership reportedly believed to date back approximately 15 years. Mr Albanese has since claimed that he did not know that he was an honorary member.

However, the Prime Minister’s association with the club is longstanding and well documented.

In 2019, while campaigning against a proposal to reduce the size of the golf course, Mr Albanese told club members: “I declare an interest … I have been coming here for decades and using this club.” Separately, while being filmed walking on the lawns outside the Marrickville Golf Club, Anthony Albanese said: “I used to, when I was in Marrickville, walk Toto there.”

More significantly, it has now been reported that Marrickville Golf Club approached Mr Albanese’s electorate office after the club was returned to the electorate of Grayndler following the October 2024 redistribution. 

The club said it dealt with the Prime Minister’s office rather than Mr Albanese directly at this time. Its spokesperson recalled being advised by the office that “there is money available” and being asked what ideas or needs the club had. The club subsequently provided the Prime Minister’s Office with a presentation outlining its proposals. 

The following year, during the 2025 Federal Election campaign, the Prime Minister personally announced that the club would receive Commonwealth funding. 

Marrickville Golf Club was subsequently awarded $6.05 million for a redevelopment including renovations to its clubhouse, outdoor dining facilities, sewerage and stormwater works, accessibility improvements and landscaping.  

Importantly, it was the only golf club to receive funding under the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program in the entire country.

These facts demand an urgent investigation.  

Why these matters are now urgent

It is now a matter of public record that an organisation of which the Prime Minister held an undisclosed honorary membership, approached his electorate office seeking funding. His office discussed the availability of Commonwealth funding with that organisation. The club was then selected for an invitation-only closed Commonwealth grants program and awarded more than $6 million of taxpayers’ money.

These circumstances raise serious questions about the integrity of the MLCIP and the direct involvement of the Prime Minister personally.  

Given these questions now involve the Prime Minister directly, I believe that it is in the national interest for the ANAO to prioritise any investigation into these aspects of the program, because at their most serious, these circumstances raise questions that perhaps only the National Anti-Corruption Commission could answer.

The ANAO should determine whether the events around the Prime Minister’s personal involvement in the Marrickville Golf Club were entirely coincidental, or whether the Prime Minister’s membership, his longstanding relationship with the club, and/or the access afforded to the club through his office influenced the decision to provide the club with Commonwealth funding.

Other relevant considerations

On January 22, 2020, then-Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese told Adelaide’s 5AA Radio:

HOST: Just before we let you go, Albo. Fairfax newspapers are reporting this morning that Federal Cabinet Minister Bridget McKenzie approved the $36,000 taxpayer funded grant for a shooting club in regional Victoria without publicly declaring that she was actually a member of the club. Do you think that the Prime Minister is going to continue to stand by her?

ALBANESE: She's got to go. This is just red hot. This is just a rort. It fails the pub test. It fails every test. 

Anthony Albanese set his own test and he has failed it. 

Anthony Albanese called for a Coalition Cabinet Minister to be sacked for failing to disclose a $36,000 grant to a club to which the Minister held an honorary membership, yet is pretending that he has not failed the same test despite awarding a grant 167 times larger to the Marrickville Golf Club. 

As Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has also established a Code of Conduct for Ministers which stipulates responsibilities held by ministers for the identification and declaration of their private interests. This is the standard, or test, the Prime Minister has set. In holding an undeclared honorary membership of a club which has received Commonwealth funding, it appears the obligations of the Code have not been complied with.  

On these grounds, and in light of the apparent failure to meet his own test of proper conduct in high office, I submit the circumstances warrant a most urgent review of the MLCIP by the Auditor-General.

Noting the heightened public interest in this matter, I respectfully urge reprioritisation of this matter and would appreciate your earliest confirmation of the same. 

Should we be of assistance to you in furthering your inquiries in relation to these revelations, please don’t hesitate to contact the undersigned.

Yours sincerely

Ben Small MP
Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure
Federal Member for Forrest

9 September 2026

Dr Caralee McLiesh PSM
Auditor-General for Australia
Australian National Audit Office
GPO Box 707
CANBERRA ACT 2601

Dear Auditor-General

Request for performance audit: Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program and Supporting Multicultural Communities Program

I write to request that you consider undertaking a performance audit, pursuant to section 15 of the Auditor-General Act 1997, into the design and administration of two Commonwealth grant programs:

1. the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program (MLCIP), administered by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts; and
2. the Supporting Multicultural Communities Program (SMCP), administered by the Department of Home Affairs.

I understand this request will be published on the ANAO website and notified to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, and I raise no objection to that course.

Why these two programs together

Both programs were established to give effect to commitments made by the Labor Party during the 2025 federal election campaign. Both distribute public money through closed processes in which the department does not receive open applications, but instead approaches a pool of pre-approved potential grantees identified by government – in this case the Labor Government which made the commitments.

In the case of the MLCIP, the department's published material states that the program is invitation-only, and that only organisations identified by the Australian Government will be invited to apply for funding for nominated projects. Both the applicant and the project are therefore selected before any departmental assessment occurs. The one-off round opened on 1 September 2025 and closed on 1 December 2025, with funding running over four years from 2025–26.

In the case of the SMCP, the department's published material states that up to $171.3 million over three years from 2025–26 will be delivered through multiple closed non-competitive and one-off ad hoc grant rounds across three streams; infrastructure, amenities, and events and programs, with further rounds since added, including Rapid Infrastructure, Rapid Assistance and Targeted Community Support.

Programs of this design carry an inherent risk that allocation decisions are driven by partisan electoral considerations rather than assessed need. That risk is not theoretical: it is the central finding of a series of ANAO performance audits into grant administration over the past decade, and it is the reason the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles 2024 introduced new key principles on merit-based processes and clearer criteria for the use of one-off ad hoc grants.

The distribution of funding

Analysis undertaken by my offices of grant award data published on GrantConnect indicates that:

• Under the MLCIP’s 74 funded programs listed publicly, 66 are projects in electorates held by the Government, with just 8 in non-Labor seats. Of $210 million in announced spending, $192.7m or 92% is directed to those programs in Labor-held seats. Indeed, five projects worth more than $21m have been funded in Eden-Monaro, which is more funding in one Labor seat than the funding into non-Labor seats nationally combined.
• Under the SMCP, the equivalent figure is 84 programs out of 90 (93%) being in Labor-held seats. Of the $129.5m listed on GrantConnect, $122m (94%) is being directed into Labor-held seats, and the program is $171.5m overall meaning that the distortion may yet rise as the rest of the program is publicly confirmed.

We would be pleased to provide the underlying dataset and methodology to your officers to assist their inquiries.

Population, existing infrastructure deficits and the geographic concentration of culturally diverse communities are all legitimate explanations for uneven distribution, and any audit would need to test them.

Rather, the primary concern is that the closed design of both programs means the public record contains no basis on which the disparity can be assessed against objective need, which is precisely the transparency gap the grants framework exists to close.

This is particularly concerning when the Prime Minister himself said “What we've seen here is a program with no guidelines, $150 million of taxpayers' money abused for political purposes, where the only guidelines were the electoral map and the political interests of the government” before demanding that “the abuse of taxpayer money must stop” (Anthony Albanese, 7 February 2020, Canberra Times).

Indeed, the Minister responsible for the MLCIP Catherine King MP described, when in opposition, similar programs as an “industrial scale pork barrelling plot” and went on to proclaim in when in Government that there were “no more colour-coded spreadsheets and no more pork barrelling”.

There is therefore a strong public interest in an examination of these programs against those declarations by senior members of the current Government.

Matters we suggest warrant examination

1. Whether the process by which organisations and projects were identified for invitation was documented, and whether that identification was informed by departmental assessment of need and merit or by advice from other sources;
2. Whether grant opportunity guidelines and assessment criteria were made publicly available on GrantConnect as required, and whether decisions were consistent with those guidelines;
3. Whether the departments provided written advice to approving ministers as required under the CGRPs, and whether reasons were recorded in writing where an approver did not accept departmental advice;
4. Whether the basis for using closed non-competitive and one-off ad hoc grant rounds, rather than open competitive rounds, was properly established and documented against the criteria in the CGRPs;
5. Clarification on how decisions for successful grantees and the funding amounts were decided, including what merit based assessment was undertaken and by whom;
6. Whether ministers who approved grants complied with their reporting obligations, including reporting on grants approved in their own electorates;
7. Whether the resulting geographic distribution of funding can be explained by objective indicators of need, and whether the departments assessed distributional outcomes at any point; and
8. Whether grant information was reported on GrantConnect within the required period.

Timeliness

These are among the first substantial programs to be designed and administered wholly under the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles 2024. An audit at this point would test whether the strengthened framework is operating as intended while both programs still have funding to allocate over the forward estimates, rather than after the money is spent.

We are not demanding evidence that Labor meet our standards but rather demanding that they meet the one they set themselves in the years before being elected - loudly.

Should we be of assistance to you in furthering your inquiries in relation to these programs, please don’t hesitate to contact the undersigned.

Yours sincerely

Ben Small MP
Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure
Federal Member for Forrest
15 August 2026