As many have said, there are likely to be important lessons from the commendable responses of Commonwealth and state governments to the COVID-19 virus threats. It's a thing of wonder how dire times can lift governments above the lesser standards they're content with when all in the garden is rosy, except, of course, for the moronic Trump, a despicable oaf beside whom all look good. Anyone for a jab of disinfectant? Equally the Commonwealth shouldn't lose sight of its less salubrious recent experiences for they can provide equally pointed and useful signals for, dare it be said, "reform".

And for the Commonwealth, it doesn't get much less salubrious than former Minister Bridget McKenzie's administration, in a manner of speaking, of hundreds of millions of dollars of sports grants funds in the lead-up to the last federal election.

As the virus may have dulled memories of this shady business, herewith a brief recap. In 2018-19, then Minister McKenzie doled out lots of money to sports clubs all around the country. When it created a stink, the Auditor-General investigated and found that the funding "was not consistent with the assessed merit of applications" but "reflected the approach, documented in the minister's office, of focusing on marginal electorates held by the Coalition, as well as those electorates of other parties or independent members that were targeted by the Coalition at the 2019 election." The Auditor also said there was no obvious legal authority for the minister's actions.

The consequent political hullabaloo was worsened by government denials of impropriety to the extent that the Prime Minister asked the secretary of his department, Phil Gaetjens, to investigate if Senator McKenzie had offended the Statement of Ministerial Standards. Having done so Mr Gaetjens denied the Auditor-General's claim of funnelling funds in favour of Coalition electorates and those it thought it could win but found Senator McKenzie guilty of a piddling failure to disclose membership of the Wangaratta Clay Target Club which got a grant. Cornered, she finally fell on her sword.

For invalid reasons, the government didn't release either Mr Gaetjens' report or legal advice it says it obtained claiming that legal authority existed for the minister's actions. Thus a parliamentary committee was established to investigate further. The virus has brought it to a halt. Nevertheless, the interrupted proceedings of the committee have brought forth useful information, both whimsical and substantive, about Senator McKenzie and her sports grants.

The most whimsical moment arose when that redoubtable Tasmanian and shining star in the Abbott government, Senator Eric Abetz, stepped up to ask questions of the Auditor-General and his staff. Pressing a line of defence the government had clung to, he asked the Auditor's staff "You found that no ineligible project or application was funded?" Oh how the handsome, if craggy, Abetz features clouded when he was told "No, that's not what we found." As the cowboy actor and crooner Gene Autry sang in his lovely hit "Ridin' Down the Canyon", the Abetz face turned to "a picture no artist could paint", although Hieronymous Bosch might have got close on one of his more agitated days.

On substance, Mr Gaetjens has provided a written submission to the parliamentary committee which he says "includes information on which I based my advice to the Prime Minister as well as supplementary data analysis". He says that his report to the Prime Minister was "limited to the application of the [Statement of Ministerial] Standards to the actions of the then minister".

Oddly, Mr Gaetjens' submission to the committee does not concern itself with ways in which particulars of the Ministerial Standards may or may not have been satisfied. Indeed, in a submission to the committee, Anne Twomey, the professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, says that Mr Gaetjens' submission "did not address at all what the Statement of Ministerial Standards requires of ministers". In particular, Professor Twomey notes that Mr Gaetjens doesn't consider the requirement for lawfulness of actions (para 1.3 of the Standards), the need for actions to be "disinterested" (para 2.8) or related provisions in paras 3.2 and 5.2. Professor Twomey concludes that "Accordingly, I cannot see how...the minister did not breach the Statement of Ministerial Standards other than failing to reveal a conflict of interest [that is, her minor association with the Wangaratta Gun Club which she had not declared]".

Mr Gaetjens' submission to the parliamentary committee is disappointing in that it relies on what he calls "persuasive data" which is not persuasive. For example:

- Mr Gaetjens says there was a significant period of time between the date of the adviser's spreadsheet [the one showing electorates that might be favoured] and the "final approval processes". Well, so what, there's often a gap between initial analysis and final decisions but that doesn't mean that analysis is uninfluential. Put it another way, is Mr Gaetjens suggesting that the huge amount of work on the many versions of the spreadsheet, including dozens of checks with the Prime Minister's office on related matters, didn't affect advice going to the minister and her decisions? Pull the other one.

- Mr Gaetjens' submission says Minister McKenzie advised him she'd "never seen the adviser's spreadsheet and that neither she nor her staff based their assessments on it". Again, so what? Ministers rarely see all details of analyses on which final recommendations are based.

- His submission says 30 per cent of grant applications favoured in the adviser's spreadsheet were not approved. That's just an arithmetical abstraction that doesn't counter the findings in the Auditor-General's report.

- Mr Gaetjens says that if the minister had only approved those grants recommended by Sport Australia, 30 electorates would have missed out whereas after she'd intervened only five didn't get a grant. This is a distracting red herring. Indeed, an even spread of grants based on needs would be a cause of suspicion because the needs of electorates are uneven as some are naturally better off than others. The electorate of Braddon is likely to have more pressing needs than North Sydney.

On the basis of this unpersuasive "data", Mr Gaetjens says "I did not find evidence that the separate funding approval process conducted in the minister's office was unduly influenced by reference to 'marginal' or 'targeted' electorates." "Unduly influenced"? But influenced nevertheless by political considerations unrelated to non-political needs. Thus Mr Gaetjens sets himself as an arbiter about what amount of political influence in the granting of sports and other grants is reasonable. Such fine judgments would trouble even the followers of Ignatius Loyola.

Fairly or not, the weaknesses of reasoning in Mr Gaetjens' submission to the parliamentary committee make it look as if he's trying to protect the government and the Prime Minister's office. It's an unattractive sight that does little to burnish his reputation as the de facto head of the public service.

Mind you, he's been put in an awkward spot. Secretaries of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet should not be asked to investigate the behaviour of ministers to whom they are subordinate and when their job tenure is dependent on prime ministers' goodwill. In good governance terms that is gravely defective. The provision in the Statement of Ministerial Standards that the Prime Minister may "seek advice from the secretary" of his department on any matters within them has been perverted from an expression of the obvious into an investigatory power with subsequent reports not being made public as a matter of course.

If prime ministers are unable or unwilling to resolve questions about the behaviour of their ministers unaided and require such matters to be investigated, that should be done by an independent authority. Some states have suitable agencies to do so. As the Commonwealth doesn't, investigations of ministerial behaviour should be undertaken by a specially appointed person who is not beholden to the Prime Minister.

More importantly, governments would do well to remove themselves from temptations to use sports or other forms of community grants as political slush funds. Sure it's up to government to decide what kinds of grants they wish to make and how much they wish to spend. However, decisions about whether to allocate money to a swimming pool here or a gun club there should be left to authorities with powers independent of ministers. This is why the Sports Commission was given such powers and money to distribute under them. If Minister McKenzie had not intervened in these decisions she may not have ended up losing her job.

Let's end up back with the virus. It's caused the Minister Assisting for the Public Service to announce a "pay pause" for public servants so they can "help share the economic burden." The move has been welcomed by the economist Chris Richardson because he says "it's pretty important for Australians to know we're all in this together." These rationales are preposterous except to the extent they highlight the absence of a sensible policy basing public service remuneration on levels paid for comparable work by other employers. If that were to be so, Australian Public Service remuneration could match whatever is happening in the rest of the community and would genuinely ensure that "we're all in this together" and sharing the burden equitably.