A leading constitutional expert has labelled an Albanese government decision to award a $6m grant to a golf club in the prime minister’s electorate as “grey corruption” and called the scheme under which it was given a “farce”. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Anne Twomey, a University of Sydney professor emerita, submitted the scathing assessment to a Senate inquiry into an opaque $560m invitation-only grants scheme used to fund projects Labor promised at the 2025 election, and which largely went to Labor-held seats.
During the 2025 campaign, the government promised the Marrickville golf club, which is in Anthony Albanese’s electorate of Grayndler, $6m for a series of upgrades. The grant was awarded under a “closed non-competitive” process last July.
Twomey labelled the grant “grey corruption”, which she described as a “broad term that encompasses any actions where governments exercise their powers to favour private interests or political interests over the national interest”.
After coming under fire last month for the grant, Albanese said the funding was meant to fix problems caused by raw sewage flowing into the adjacent Cooks River. But Twomey wrote that there was no reference to this in the prime minister’s original announcement in 2025, only that it involved renovations and the harvesting of storm water to irrigate the golf course.
He said at the time: “I make no apologies for my electorate being serviced by me as a good local member.”
Twomey responded to this in her submission, saying: “No, this is not about ‘being a good local member’. It is about indulging in grey corruption and the misuse of public money at the public’s expense.
“If federal politicians want to make election promises, then they should be doing so about federal matters and the policies that they propose to implement if elected. Public money is not their own money to spend at will, or money belonging to their political party.”
A scandal erupted last month when research found that the money in the program went overwhelmingly to Labor electorates. The Centre for Public Integrity found 73% of the allocated funding went to seats held by Labor MPs before the election.
Labor strongly defended the program as within the rules – the infrastructure minister, Catherine King, has said there was no conflict of interest as Albanese was not the decision-maker on the grant. She said applications had been approved after they were assessed to show they met value for money.
“That is what happens after every single election,” King said.
Twomey wrote that the promise of the $6m had been made after the club was given more than $58,000 across four years for five grants that funded upgrades, including to the toilets, club house and lockers, and to planting rows of trees. All of these grants, except for one in 2019, were classified as “closed, non-competitive”.
Twomey labelled this “remarkable”, adding that the “effect was that the Marrickville Golf Club was granted funds without any assessment of whether it had greater need for these grants than anyone else”.
“They were effectively gifts of political largesse, funded by taxpayers,” she wrote.
Some of the grants were awarded while the Coalition was in government. Twomey wrote that “at first glance this might be regarded as a counter to accusations of pork-barrelling” but “it in fact reveals a more systemic problem with such grants”.
She said this was because under the scheme – called the Powering Communities and Stronger Communities Programs – local MPs selected organisations to apply for the grant. Twomey wrote that it appeared all the grants were a consequence of a choice made by Albanese and such schemes “provide a variation on the more common form of pork-barrelling”.
“They still favour the government of the day, because a government will almost always have more MPs than the opposition,” she wrote. “But it gives the illusion of evenhandedness, even though the recipients for grants are chosen on political grounds.”
Twomey labelled the grants system a “farce” as its guidelines were “drafted after the promises have been made to ensure that they can be met”.
The scheme was “deliberately constructed in this way, to provide a public perception of integrity and propriety while facilitating political patronage and the grant of favours with public money, contrary to the public interest”.
While the program did appear to be constitutionally valid, she warned there were still obligations that needed to be met, including the efficient and ethical spending of public money.
The offices of Albanese and King were approached for comment.