CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Coalition’s ‘sports rort’ continues right across the party today, after it was revealed that a sporting club with close ties to the Nationals Member for Dawson received a $300,000 grant to help upgrade their facilities.
While many locals recognise that that The Manila Central Ping Pong Club (MCPPC) has been in dire need of some actual ping pong tables for quite some times now, questions has been raised about why they received such a large amount of money.
The Manila Central Ping Pong Club is one of the biggest grassroots racquet sports organisations in the Filipino city of Manila, which apparently sits square in the North Queensland electorate of Dawson.
It is not yet known if the Member For Dawson, George Christensen put a good word in for his constituents at the Manila Central Ping Pong Club. However, it does not look good considering his recent controversies related to travel in that part of the world.
Christensen, who has come under fire for his extensive travel to the Philippines, referred his travel expenses to the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) following reports he had used entitlements to pay for connecting flights to Manila.
The outspoken member for Dawson made 28 trips and spent almost 300 days in the Philippines between 2014 and 2018.
These revelations add even more fuel to the theory that the Coalition government lost a lot of their greatest thinkers after the post-Turnbull brain-drain of Pyne, Bishop and Laundy.
As of this afternoon it can be revealed that more than $1m in sport grants was handed to nine clubs that boast senior Coalition MPs as members or patrons, including one undisclosed by Bridget McKenzie, three linked to Ken Wyatt, one tied to treasurer and treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and two associated with senator Sarah Henderson.
The controversial $100m grant program gave money to a gun club joined by the former sports minister, a tennis club where Frydenberg is an honorary member, an Australian rules football club where Wyatt is the “No 1 ticket holder”, and Henderson’s football and netball club. A soccer club in Morrison’s electorate has been documented celebrating their new upgrades before the grants were even announced.
While the $300,000 grant to the MCPPC may seem suspicious, it is unlikely anything will come from it because the Federal Government are not accountable for their actions.
