‘How’s $100,000 sound?’: John Barilaro directed grants to marginal seats

Former New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro directed millions of dollars in grants to Coalition electorates, many of them at-risk National party seats, from a discretionary pool of funds which have almost no departmental oversight.

An analysis of discretionary grants handed out by Barilaro during the past three years shows that 70% of the $3m spent went to Coalition seats.

Recipients have included his successor in the seat of Monaro, Nichole Overall, as well as the NRL and a soccer club where Barilaro was president for eight years.

In particular, the use of discretionary funds in seats in the lead-up to elections has raised questions about how the grants operate, and a lack of oversight by government departments.

In some cases, recipients said they were asked by Barilaro himself to submit funding requests to his office.

In the lead up to last May's Upper Hunter byelection, the Nationals made some $120m in funding promises as it successfully held the seat after the resignation of former MP Michael Johnsen. Among them were a series of significant announcements, including $45m for an upgrade of the Muswellbrook hospital and $12m for a police station in the town of Singleton.

But the pre-election spend also included a series of grants to local organisations that were not subject to departmental advice, or recommendations.

The Upper Hunter received $340,000 in grants from Barilaro in the last financial year, about a fifth of the total money distributed under a fund known as the deputy premier's discretionary or miscellaneous fund.

Among the grants were $200,000 given to the Muswellbrook Golf Club in the weeks leading up to the vote. The grant followed a separate $1m payment in 2019, and was announced by Barilaro just days before the byelection.

Club president Daryl Egan told the Guardian a cost blowout meant the course needed additional funding to complete work on the project, and that he raised the prospect of securing the money while Barilaro was in town during the byelection campaign.

"We were talking to the deputy premier and he asked how it was going and I told him that, yes, because of Covid and a few other things the cost had increased," he said.

Egan said he was asked to write a letter explaining the need for the additional funding and that it had been secured "within a few weeks". The funding was not without any requirements - Egan said that after the money was provided the club was required to provide evidence to the department showing what it had been spent on - but did not require a formal grant application.

Similarly, in the weeks leading up to the vote Barilaro announced a $100,000 grant to a local networking organisation called Upper Hunter Women in Business.

The funds were to be delivered over two separate years. The group's founder, Lavinia Hutchinson, did not respond to a request for comment, but in April when the grant was awarded she told a local news site that Barilaro had offered the group funding in the lead up to the byelection.

Barilaro was quoted in the same report saying: "This is not an election commitment, regardless of the election it is me as deputy premier supporting what I believe is a very worthy organisation."

Barilaro did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment.

Labor's shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, accused the Nationals of doing "their best Santa Claus impression" during the byelection.

"They gave what they want, to whom they wanted, whenever they wanted to," he said.

"Other communities missed out as the government doled on public funds to save their skins in a tightly fought byelection."

That pattern has been repeated elsewhere. At the previous state election in 2019 the Nationals party was fighting to hold on to a series of seats including Lismore, Barwon and Murray, while also hoping to win back Ballina, which it lost to the Greens in 2015.

Of the almost $870,000 in total grants awarded by Barilaro during that year, about a fifth went to those four seats. They included a $26,000 grant to a gym in the seat of Murray two weeks before the election, as well as a series of larger grants to local councils. In Ballina, a $25,700 grant for the Lennox Head Surf Club was announced four months before the 2019 election by Nationals' candidate in the seat Ben Franklin.

Of the rest of the funds distributed that year, only two grants valued at $35,000 went to organisations based in non-government seats, although some were directed to larger organisations not based in a particular electorate.

The NSW government has faced repeated controversy over its use of grant funding in recent years. In February the auditor general released a scathing report into a $252m grant scheme which directed more than 95% of funds to local councils in government seats. The fund, the auditor found, "lacked integrity" and did not use any consistent guidelines in awarding grants.

But unlike those programs, the deputy premier's discretionary grants aren't subject to vetting, and government departments don't make formal recommendations about the benefits of the funding.

Instead, as the name suggests, the grants are entirely at the discretion of the minister.

In March last year, Chris Hanger, a senior official in the Department of Regional NSW, told a parliamentary inquiry that approvals for money from the discretionary grant pool only require an email from a ministerial adviser to gain signoff.

It was, Hanger said, the only fund of its type overseen by his department.

Designed to allow the deputy premier to fund "small-scale" community projects that would otherwise struggle to gain financial support, some of the money has also been directed to larger private organisations.

Last year, one of the largest grants handed out under the fund was $50,000 given to the NRL to help fund the multi-billion dollar code's "roads to regions" program.

The program, according to a spokesperson for current deputy premier Paul Toole, was aimed at allowing former NRL stars and NRLW players to travel to regional areas to run "educational programs in schools, visit junior rugby league clubs and take part in local community events".

According to the NRL, though, the program's aim was to "support and empower rugby league communities where no NRL club engagement is present" in order to "grow the game" not only in NSW but also Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

It was the second time the program had received funds from the deputy premier. In 2018, Barilaro directed another $40,000 to the NRL for the same purpose. Last year another $130,000 was given separately to the league under the government's drought stimulus fund.

That funding, which Barilaro also oversaw, was allocated to play a match in Tamworth to "bolster community morale and support drought recovery".

The government refused to answer repeated questions about how grants are chosen under the scheme, and how potential applicants are informed about the availability of discretionary grant funds.

But other grants have also raised eyebrows. In 2018, Barilaro awarded $5,000 to Nichole Overall, a Queanbeyan-based journalist and author, to support a local art installation.

Overall, whose husband, Tim Overall, was until recently mayor of Queanbeyan and once sat on the council with Barilaro, replaced him as the Monaro state MP at last month's byelection. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Overall did not respond to a request for comment.

Barilaro also handed two grants to the Monaro Panthers, a football club where he was president for eight years prior to his election to parliament.

The two grants - for $30,000 in 2018/19 and $10,000 in 2020/21 - went to upgrades to toilets, stadium seating, and female dressing rooms at the club, as well as support for a youth football tournament.

It followed $78,000 in funds he allocated the club under the now defunct Community Building Partnerships in 2013 prior to becoming Nationals leader. At the time, Barilaro faced criticism for his failure to declare a conflict of interest over the grant, which he dismissed because he was not an office bearer at the club when the money was awarded.

Discretionary funds aren't new. The premier has his own fund which has existed since 1998, and money allocated from it has fluctuated significantly in that time. In 2010/11, during the final year of the former Labor government, $14.2m was signed off on from the fund.

It was only after Barry O'Farrell's election in 2011 that money from the fund was made consistent at $2.3m per annum.