Regional grants are improving: auditor

Name: SmartyGrants
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Posted on 06 Mar 2025

By Matthew Schulz, journalist, SmartyGrants

A grants fund targeting local government and not-for-profit groups to boost regional and rural Australia has, so far, been given a clean bill of health by the nation’s grants watchdog.

The Growing Regions program – worth $600 million – is the latest grants program to be audited by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

The program is providing grants of between $500,000 and $15 million towards “priority community and economic infrastructure”. The first of two rounds was awarded in May 2024, with $207 million allocated to 54 projects.

“When designing programs, entities should establish appropriate funding mechanisms are in place to ensure the program has lawful authority for the expenditure.”

Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report

According to the ANAO, the implementation and awarding of funds “was largely effective” and the funding recommendations and decisions were “largely” in line with Commonwealth rules. The assessment of applications was criticised for being “partly” in accordance with guidelines.

The ANAO made two recommendations to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts:

better identify in the program guidelines how to assess ineligible project types and expenditure
maintain the transparency of assessments by applying program guidelines.

The department accepted both recommendations and agreed to revise guidelines for the second round “to take into consideration lessons learned from Round 1, including in relation to program eligibility and the assessment process”.

The latest audit follows an earlier investigation into the design of the Growing Regions program, and past ANAO audits highlighting deficiencies in the implementation of departmental grants programs.

The ANAO said in its report that the key messages that emerged from the investigation were that:

“To ensure compliance with Australian Government funding requirements, all assessment criteria used to assess applications should be clearly outlined in the program guidelines. Entities should not complete additional assessments that are not set out in the guidelines.”

and

“When designing programs, entities should establish appropriate funding mechanisms are in place to ensure the program has lawful authority for the expenditure.”