Some projects were across multiple electorates.
There was generally “no trend evident” in terms of projects flowing to seats held by particular parties across the entire Safer Communities Fund – except in the case of the 2016 round and the third round of projects that were announced during the 2019 election.
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The report found the round three projects were “located solely in a Coalition-held marginal electorate and,to a lesser extent,Coalition-held fairly safe electorates[and] represented a higher proportion of approved applications (in both numerical and dollar terms) than they represented as a proportion of the application population”.
“The funding awarded to projects located in safe electorates and fairly safe electorates held by the ALP was lower in comparison to the proportion of the application population they represented.”
The audit also found decisions on awarding grants weren’t appropriately informed by departmental briefings and that for the majority of cases,the basis of ministerial briefings wasn’t clearly recorded.
This includes cases when ministers only approved part of the funding asked for. Documents previously released under freedom of information laws have shownMr Dutton diverted money away from recommended projects to other hand-picked applicants,largely in Coalition seats.
“It was not recorded how decisions were taken about which applications would receive partial rather than full funding,and how the amount of partial funding was derived,” the audit report said.
The audit also found that as the program went on,it became unclear which minister was responsible for decisions and,in two rounds,the minister who actually made the decision was not the one named in the guidelines.
The program was initially set up to boost the efforts of local councils and community groups to combat crime and anti-social behaviour.
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However,the audit found 84 per cent of its funds have been given to religious groups,overwhelmingly Jewish or Christian. It notes this represents the groups who submitted the most applications,saying Muslim,Buddhist,Hindu and Sikh groups made relatively few applications for money.
There were 16 cultural groups that applied for funding but had never been successful:Filipino,Iraqi,Italian,Russian,Assyrian,Chinese,Congolese,Fujian,Indian,Iranian,Korean,Kurdish,Malaysian,Persian,Polish,Ukrainian.
The Auditor-General recommended the department make sure in future that everyone in the target audience for grant opportunities are aware funding is available so there are no actual or perceived barriers to entry.
It also said Home Affairs needs to give better briefings to ministers with more information about the merits of each application.
The department agreed to all the recommendations.