A business case for a publicly funded grandstand at the Darwin Turf Club included "ill-founded and spurious claims" and was created just one day before Cabinet ministers agreed to hand over $12 million for the project, a report by the NT's Independent Commissioner Against Corruption [ICAC] has found.
ICAC Commissioner Ken Fleming found the turf club's funding application contained many "bare assertions". The grant application — signed by Mr Dixon and written by the turf club's CEO Keith Stacy — was sent that afternoon to the Department of Business, Trade and Innovation's chief executive. "The barest is the claim for a grant of $12 million as being the cost of construction," the report states.The commissioner also found the so-called business case was "ill-founded and spurious" because it made "unverified" claims about how many people would attend events at the proposed venue.
"The market-led proposal process was subverted and it led to bad and incomplete information coming to the Cabinet room and Cabinet making the decision it would not have made if it had all the information that should have been made available to it." "But as this process has shown, when ministers stepped away, it was easier for unsatisfactory conduct to occur."
They aren't even putting in any effort into corruption anymore.