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Wednesday 15 August 2018
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Eagles chase
EDITHVALE-Aspendale went down to Mt Eliza in weekend footy and slipped further down the ladder as finals approach. See sports page 12. Picture: Andrew Hurst
Reef grief over grant Neil Walker neil@baysidenews.com.au A CONTROVERSIAL near half a billion grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation has been slammed as “a slap in the face” to scientists working in Aspendale. A federal government decision to
give $443 million to the foundation is under scrutiny after it emerged the organisation itself did not formally apply for the taxpayer-funded grant. Federal Isaacs Labor MP Mark Dreyfus blasted the decision by the Liberal National Coalition government and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Dreyfus said the money would
have been better directed towards climate change research by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). “Mr Turnbull’s captain’s call is a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars and is a slap in the face of the hard-working climate scientists at the CSIRO in Aspendale,” Mr Dreyfus said. “There is simply no way to justify
that funding of this size would bypass sufficient process and be handed to an organisation with just six staff, that didn’t even ask for it. Yet that is exactly what has happened.” Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg says “extensive due diligence” was done before deciding to give the foundation $443 million of taxpayers’ money.
The foundation itself said it was unaware of the “due diligence”. “My department concluded this grant would meet the government’s policy commitment to protect the Great Barrier Reef, represented value for money and was consistent with the governance and accountability act,” Mr Frydenberg told Parliament on Monday. Continued page 4