By: Nick Tyrrell
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has serious explaining to do, after Labor’s $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure grants program was revealed by the Centre for Public Integrity to fall well short of the accountability and transparency the Senator herself promised.
After twenty-five years in politics – a term as Chief Minister and three federal ministries later – Mr Tyrrell said Canberrans were entitled to expect more from a career politician than promises that don’t survive contact with her own government.
In July 2024, Senator Gallagher announced new Commonwealth Grants Rules, promising a higher standard for how taxpayer money would be handled.
“Grants provide significant benefits to the Australian community, and we want to ensure the process of awarding grants is open and transparent.”
Senator Katy Gallagher, media release, 4 July 2024.
“An invite-only fund with no application process and no published criteria is not open, and it is not transparent. After 25 years as a professional politician, Katy Gallagher knows exactly what those words mean. She just doesn’t seem to care about delivering on them.”
“Katy Gallagher was there with the cheque for Chisholm Oval, so she knows exactly how this fund works,” Mr Tyrrell said.
The grants scheme was rolled out through the second half of 2025, as Labor’s massive election-winning margin evaporated in the polls. An expenses scandal engulfed several senior ministers, and by January 2026 Labor’s two-party-preferred lead had fallen to 52-48, the closest the contest had been since the 2025 election
Against that backdrop, an analysis by the Centre for Public Integrity, reported by the ABC, found 73 per cent of Labor’s $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program went to Labor-held electorates, 23 per cent to Coalition seats and just 4 per cent to everyone else.
Mr Tyrrell said the pattern extended beyond grants. As the minister responsible, Senator Gallagher sat on the Briggs ‘jobs for mates’ review of public appointments for over two years before releasing it in December 2025, and she has resisted calls for an independent audit of federal infrastructure spending in the ACT following the Integrity Commission’s Operation Kingfisher corruption findings.
“Grants with no scrutiny, a jobs-for-mates report sat on for two years, and a corruption audit she won’t back. Every time integrity is the question, Katy Gallagher’s answer is silence. That’s not the standard she promised, and it does not meet the expectations of Canberrans who have been represented by Katy Gallagher for 25 years,” Mr Tyrrell said.
Mr Tyrrell is calling on Senator Gallagher to explain why her own 2024 standard was not applied to this fund, to back an independent audit of federal infrastructure spending in the ACT, and on the Government to publish a full, electorate-by-electorate breakdown of the program.