A Tasmanian Liberal candidate announced a $100,000 taxpayer-funded election grant for a volleyball club he was involved with, the ABC can reveal.
Tasmania's Liberal government has been facing growing allegations of pork-barrelling for funding promises made to sporting clubs and organisations during last year's state election.
During the campaign, Liberal candidates requested money under the Local Community Facilities Fund on behalf of organisations, and recipients were decided internally by Liberal Party members.
One was awarded to the Tasmania Echidnas Volleyball Club, announced by then-Liberal candidate and now-Franklin MHA Dean Young.
Mr Young had been the vice-president of the Echidnas until just prior to the campaign.
He was also the vice-president of Volleyball Tasmania and announced the decision to award the Echidnas grant in the final days of the campaign to Volleyball Tasmania's president Stephen Ibbott.
Mr Young has since succeeded Mr Ibbott as the organisation's president.
A week after the election campaign, Mr Ibbott wrote in his president's report following the AGM that "I would … like to thank my vice president Dean Young, who has in a short time broadened VTAS professional networks and taken important steps in government circles to lay the solid foundation required to launch us into a new phase of development".
Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O'Connor does not begrudge the club the funding but said others missed out.
"We're talking about $100,000 of public money that went to a sporting organisation, and the only reason they received that money was because a Liberal candidate was their vice-president," Ms O'Connor said.
"The issue here is for all those sporting organisations who would also have had a legitimate claim for support but who were never made an offer because they weren't connected to a Liberal party candidate."
Mr Young was contacted for comment.
He is the ninth Tasmanian government MP to be linked to groups that received funding in a scheme criticised as "electoral bribery".
"It tells us everything that we need to know about the Local Community Facilities Fund to know that nine of the elected Liberals were in a position to promise cash to an organisation they were connected to," Ms O'Connor said.
Questions raised over integrity of process
The funding commitment was announced during the last state election campaign by Mr Young on his candidate Facebook page.
The government said announcing promises that way and then delivering the money was transparent, fair and democratic.
University of Tasmania political analyst Richard Herr said the revelations raised questions about the integrity of the process.
"Politicians are going to make promises, we expect them to make promises, and there's nothing wrong with delivering on promises because we would castigate them if they don't deliver," Dr Herr said.
"What we don't expect is politicians to behave with favouritism, with bias toward a section of the community with which they have a special relationship or a special concern.
"Secondly, we don't expect them to be able to deliver promises that aren't delivered consistently with the appropriate use of public monies.
"It's one thing to make a promise that you will try to do something, it's quite another thing to have a private slush fund available to you to give effect to those promises because they haven't gone through a vetting process to see if there wasn't something more important for that community."
A government spokeswoman said the community would not expect an organisation to be ineligible for funding just because a candidate was linked to it.
She said the commitments benefited everyday Tasmanians across the state.
More than 50pc of election grants doled out in secretive process
The ABC has previously revealed that one grant announced by Liberal candidate Madeleine Ogilvie during the 2021 Tasmanian state election campaign funnelled $150,000 into the rowing club where her daughter was a member.
Another was announced by Mr Street for the Lindisfarne Country Women's Association branch during last April's election campaign — the same branch his family member was the treasurer of.
And a $165,000 grant was awarded to St Vincent de Paul, the workplace of then-Liberal candidate Lara Alexander, for new vans.
Ms Alexander also signed off on the receipt of one $75,000 grant as president of the Rotary Club of South Launceston, which was delivered before she was elected on a recount.
In September, questions were raised in state parliament over a $400,000 grant for the Bracknell Hall, because speaker Mark Shelton and some of his family members are on its committee.
Tasmanian Liberal MPs were also patrons or members of at least seven organisations that received grants under the scheme.
Last week, the ABC revealed funding for more than half of the grants promised during the campaign never went through parliamentary scrutiny.
Instead, they were signed off by Tasmania's Governor under a process designed for unforeseen urgent spending.
Tasmania's Integrity Commission released a bombshell report in April 2022 raising concerns over electoral bribery, or pork-barrelling, during the 2018 state election campaign.
It raised questions over tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money handed out by the Liberal Party in 2018, drawing comparisons to the Commonwealth's so-called "sports rorts" saga, but pointed out there were fewer rules governing the practice in Tasmania.
