Final hearing for the grants inquiry today and we will hopefullly FINALLY get to the bottom of who in the Premier, Deputy and Minister's offices was involved in the allocation of a quarter of a billion of public money primarily to coalition seats #nswpol

We have only called staffers called as witnesses today because their bosses have refused to attend. It should be the Premier answering these questions directly.

You'll be able to watch live from 10am here: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Pages/webcasts.aspx

We're starting with the Premier's former Policy Director

We're starting by presenting him with the documents shredded by the Premier's advisor about the grants scheme

He is advising that the administration of the program was a matter for the office of Local Government - but he also told his advisor to get Coalition MPs to speak to their local councils about projects they wanted to be funded

Was any non-Government MP spoken to about the funding available under this grant program?

It does not appear so.

The Premier announced $255k funding in the Wagga area just before the Wagga Wagga by-election - he advises this was in the Deputy Premier's remit, it's unclear how the Premier came to make the announcement

It's interesting that the Premier is out in public defending pork barrelling but won't come before the committee to answer questions

Apparently the way funding was determined was a simple matter of mathematics - we're again being asked to believe there was no actual decision maker. This makes no sense!!

We're told that the rules put together for this program were signed off by the Minister for Local Gov and the Premier - they involved NO merit assessment of the projects funded

We've now got the Deputy Premier's former deputy chief of staff - her advice is that there is no paperwork provided to the Deputy Premier on this project

It seems there is at least some role for the Deputy Premier's office in the decision making but it's utterly unclear that this was

We have emails asking if the Deputy Premier has "approved" the funding allocations, an email saying yes he had - but the evidence continues to be that he had no sign off role in this scheme.

Apparently this was just that he was able to put projects forward for approval?

No documents were shredded because there were no documents created. Not sure if this is better or worse?

The funding approval that we are told is the approval for the Wagga grants was signed about 5 months after the Premier announced the projects!

The witness confirms that she did not have contact with any non government MPs - she does not recall a clear direction for this to be the case. She was advised there was a significant amount of public money available under the scheme.

All the Office of Local Government got to "sign off on" from the Deputy Premier's office was a dollar amount and a project name - there was no comprehensive assessment provided.