Grants on the register
77
plus $14M in post report findings
$215 million from Labor governments to unions since 2022. No open tender for the biggest grants. No published outcomes for any of them. Maybe it works. Maybe it does not. Nobody can tell. That is the problem.
2022 to 2028 commitments, verified to the cent against GrantConnect and state disclosures. And the register is incomplete.
Most of it from the government's own paperwork.
DEWR FOI log · Community Grants Hub · MRC p.13
GrantConnect, Oct 2025 · MRC p.15
Honesty cuts both ways. The Building Women's Careers program funds consortia that include major employers, TAFEs and industry groups, not just unions. Union membership recorded its first rise since 2011 in the latest ABS figures. Programs training health and safety reps and educating migrant workers are, on their face, legitimate public purposes.
If these grants are delivering safer sites, more women in trades, and fewer exploited workers, that is a story worth telling, and the data to tell it sits inside the funded organisations right now.
Sources: DEWR · ABS, Aug 2024
Per grant outcome reporting. What was delivered, measured against what was promised, published where taxpayers can read it.
Open, competitive tenders. If a union body is the best organisation to deliver a program, it can win a fair process. Pre selection proves nothing except who wrote the guest list.
Independent evaluation before renewal. The gender equality pilot became a $44.5M standing commitment before any public evaluation of the pilot appeared. Extensions should follow evidence, not precede it.
Program history: Ministers' Media Centre · MRC (2026) p.14
Every grant over $100,000 gets a public outcome statement.
No more renewals by invitation. Open process, published criteria.
One audit found campaigning on the public purse. Audit the rest.
New grants, new audits, outcome reports published or not. One email when something changes.
One email when something changes. No spam, no sharing of your address.