A golf club that received $6 million in federal funding has revealed Anthony Albanese held a full honorary membership worth thousands of dollars, contradicting the prime minister’s previous comments.
In the two months since a Centre for Public Integrity report drew attention to the grant scheme, Mr Albanese has maintained he held an honorary social membership of the Marrickville Golf Club – located within his inner-Sydney electorate – worth $5.
Under questioning at a Senate inquiry into the scheme, club president Andrew Tighe said Mr Albanese’s honorary membership – first given in 2012 – was actually worth $1100 in 2026 alone.
Mr Tighe also said Mr Albanese, first elected as MP in 1996, had never utilised the membership by playing a round.
“Conventionally, you only give it to people who never use it,” he said.
Mr Albanese resigned the membership on September 14, saying he was never aware it had been bestowed.
All MPs are required to declare gifts worth more than $750, with Mr Albanese failing to do so.
Mr Albanese corrected the record in October after falsely declaring, both in parliament and to media, that the golf club’s grant was for sewerage works.
Instead, the $6 million is mostly funding a clubhouse renovation, as well as stormwater harvesting and a “native species botanical garden”.
The modest Sydney golf club has found itself at the centre of a political storm around the grants scheme, which has been labelled as “grey corruption” and a distortion of proper process.
Club officials told the committee their bar staff had been repeatedly pranked and abused as a result of the heightened interest.
“Smart alecs ring up our dear bar staff and ask for their Albo money back,” Mr Tighe said.
Club manager Mathew Ward said they had to disconnect phone lines at times, with bar staff called “scum” and worse.
The government defends the scheme as an appropriate vehicle to fund more than 200 community-level promises made around the country from Labor’s 2025 re-election campaign.
The Centre for Public Integrity report finds a bias towards projects in Labor-held seats, and a more significant bias towards marginal seats, which suggests funding was offered to help win an election, rather than on merit.
Senators asked the infrastructure department, which is responsible for administering the program, to provide the merit assessments of each of the projects.
The department said projects needed to score at least 60 out of 100 on three criteria to be funded: social and economic community benefits; project viability and sustainability; and capacity, capability and resources to deliver the project.
However, it has refused to provide each project’s score, saying it could “prejudice the integrity” of this and future grants.
Coalition senator Paul Scarr said that denied observers the chance to decide for themselves of the worthiness of half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds.
The tense hearing was twice suspended by chair Ross Cadell to deal with political questioning of witnesses and objections.
During one heated exchange, Labor senator Josh Dolega asked whether representatives from regional golf clubs in Rutherglen and Binalong had been paid by coalition senator Bridget McKenzie to appear.
“What are you insinuating?” Binalong Community Club captain Pat Dwyer shot back.
Mr Dwyer, who said he attended after an invitation from Senator McKenzie’s office, offered a sharp criticism of the grants scheme and the golf club grant.
“The process, or lack of it, stinks,” he said.
