A retired law professor has revealed that the Marrickville Golf Club, in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Sydney electorate of Grayndler, received at least five federal grants before securing this year’s $6 million (US$4.21 million) infrastructure payment.
Professor Emerita Anne Twomey, of the University of Sydney, told a Centre for Public Integrity webinar on grants reform that the earlier grants covered minor works, including toilet renovations, tree planting, benches, and clubhouse lighting.
Some were made under the Coalition and some under Labor, she said, but all were awarded the same way.
“Every single one of these grants was a closed, non-competitive grant, and the ones that were made while Labor was not in office were made because the local member was Mr. Albanese,” Twomey said.
“And they were based on … criteria where whoever happens to be the local member who’s elected in the electorate, they get to nominate who gets the money. So we’ve got a slightly different version of pork barrelling here.”
The $6 million clubhouse grant was promised in April 2025, ahead of the May 2025 federal election. Twomey told the webinar the council partnered with the club in July 2025 to design the works, before the program’s guidelines were published in September.
In October 2025, the guidelines were changed to require a state or local government body to act as a “sponsor”, receiving the funds on the club’s behalf—a change Twomey said was designed to get around the constitutional problem of paying a private club directly.
Twomey also challenged the government’s stated reason for the grant: raw sewage entering the nearby Cooks River.
She said a $259,000 New South Wales government grant the previous year had already connected the clubhouse to the sewerage system, eliminating the septic tanks responsible for the discharge.
Albanese has defended his ties to the club after it emerged he held an undeclared honorary membership.
“I don’t have a card. I don’t go to the club,” he said. “I never got anything, I don’t use the facilities.”
The Marrickville grant was funded through the $560.9 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program (MLCIP), an invitation-only scheme under which almost three-quarters of funding went to Labor-held electorates, a Centre for Public Integrity analysis found.
Earlier, FOI documents revealed that Health Minister Mark Butler’s office had encouraged a council in his own electorate to bid for a $5 million grant under the program, before its guidelines were finalised.
The Epoch Times contacted the Prime Minister’s Office for comment.
