Prime Minister Anthony Albanese still owns a multi-million-dollar investment property near the Marrickville Golf Club precinct at the centre of a growing controversy over a $6.05 million taxpayer-funded upgrade.
Mr Albanese’s latest parliamentary declarations list a house in Marrickville as his former home and an investment property, as well as rental income from the property.
Public property records and previous real estate reporting show the three-bedroom Federation home was purchased by Mr Albanese and his then-wife, former NSW Labor deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt, for $997,500 in 2006.
The property was transferred into Mr Albanese’s sole ownership after the couple separated and has since been used as a rental property after he moved into the Prime Minister’s official residences following Labor’s 2022 election victory.
Automated property estimates have placed its value at about $2.6 million, although such estimates are indicative rather than a confirmed market price.
The house is on Beauchamp Street in Marrickville, close to the golf course that Mr Albanese has publicly described as an important part of his local community and which Labor promised $6.05 million to upgrade during the 2025 federal election campaign.
The proximity of the property adds another layer to the political scrutiny surrounding the grant, which was already under examination because of Mr Albanese’s long association with the club and the revelation that he had been listed as an honorary member.
There is no evidence that ownership of the nearby property produced a direct financial benefit from the grant, nor has any integrity body made a finding that Mr Albanese acted improperly in relation to the funding.
But the combination of his local property interest, honorary membership and past advocacy for the course has intensified questions about transparency surrounding the project and the wider grants program through which it was funded.
Albanese declared an interest when defending the course
Mr Albanese’s connection with the Marrickville Golf Club stretches back decades.
In 2019, when local proposals threatened to reduce the 18-hole golf course to nine holes and convert part of the land to additional public parkland, Mr Albanese joined the campaign opposing the changes.
Speaking during that campaign, he explicitly referred to his personal connection to the area.
“I declare an interest,” he said, before noting that he lived in Beauchamp Street and had been coming to and using the club for decades.
The campaign was successful and the proposal to halve the course did not proceed.
Mr Albanese has also spoken repeatedly about walking his dog around the golf course and has appeared at political and community events associated with the venue.
That history has now attracted fresh attention because of the government’s 2025 commitment to provide $6.05 million for an extensive redevelopment of the precinct.
The funding was announced by Mr Albanese himself on April 27, 2025, less than a week before the federal election.
The announcement described Marrickville Golf Club as a “much-loved community sporting precinct” and said the investment would secure its future.
The planned works were broader than improvements solely for golfers. They included clubhouse renovations, expanded outdoor areas, improved pedestrian and cycling access, new community meeting and function spaces, accessibility improvements and stormwater infrastructure intended to benefit the surrounding sporting fields and the Cooks River.
Inner West Council subsequently welcomed the commitment and moved to work with the club on design, approvals and administration of the project.
The honorary membership controversy
The property revelations come as Mr Albanese faces separate questions about an honorary membership of Marrickville Golf Club that was not included on his parliamentary register of interests.
The club confirmed this week that Mr Albanese had been recorded as an honorary member for many years.
Mr Albanese said he had since been advised the honorary status was granted in 2012, but maintained he had not known about it.
He told the ABC he did not have a membership card and had not been inside the clubhouse for years.
In parliament, the Prime Minister sought to play down the significance of the membership, pointing to the very low cost of the club’s social membership. A social membership costs $5 for two years, although that is distinct from a full playing membership.
The parliamentary register requires MPs to disclose memberships where a conflict of interest with their public duties could foreseeably arise. Ordinary membership of a community or sporting organisation would not automatically amount to a conflict.
Mr Albanese has nevertheless declared some other honorary and sporting memberships, including an honorary membership of Royal Sydney Golf Club granted after he became Prime Minister.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said on Thursday that Mr Albanese should have declared the Marrickville interest.
The Prime Minister rejects the suggestion that his honorary status had anything to do with the funding decision.
Who actually approved the grant?
Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has defended the process and stressed that Mr Albanese was not the ministerial decision-maker responsible for approving grants under the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program.
Ms King said applications were assessed by the Department of Infrastructure for value for money before coming to her for final approval.
Her argument is that any potential conflict requiring management at the grant approval stage would primarily concern the actual decision-maker.
That does not entirely resolve the broader political question, however, because the controversy surrounding the MLCI program is focused heavily on an earlier stage: how organisations and projects were selected to receive an invitation in the first place.
The program was established to deliver community infrastructure commitments made by Labor before the 2025 election.
Its published guidelines state explicitly that it is non-competitive and invitation-only. Only projects identified by the Australian Government are invited to apply.
An invitation does not automatically guarantee funding, and projects remain subject to assessment against the program criteria. But organisations not selected for an invitation never enter that assessment process at all.
That distinction is central to allegations that the scheme favoured Labor electorates.
$409 million went to Labor-held seats, integrity group says
Analysis released this week by the Centre for Public Integrity found that about 73.2 per cent of funding under the $560 million program — approximately $409.1 million — went to electorates notionally held by Labor.
Coalition-held divisions received 22.6 per cent, while other electorates received 4.3 per cent, according to the organisation’s analysis.
The Centre calculated that for every dollar allocated to a Coalition electorate, more than $3.20 went to a Labor seat.
It also found that 45 federal electorates received no funding through the program.
The figures do not by themselves establish that individual grants were improper. Election commitments have long been converted into government spending programs after parties take office, and geographic distributions can legitimately vary according to population, infrastructure needs and the projects political parties take to an election.
But critics say the closed structure of the program makes it difficult to assess why one community project was selected for consideration while another was not.
Marrickville Golf Club has become the most politically sensitive example because it sits in the Prime Minister’s own electorate of Grayndler, because Mr Albanese announced the commitment himself, and because of his longstanding association with the course.
The revelation that he also retains a valuable property nearby has added to that scrutiny, even though there is no established evidence that the grant increased the property’s value or delivered him a personal financial gain.
Property remains declared as an investment
Mr Albanese’s current parliamentary interests confirm that he continues to own a Marrickville house described as a former home and investment property.
His declarations also record rental income from the Marrickville property.
The house was once his family home. After Mr Albanese became Prime Minister, it entered the rental market, with earlier advertising seeking about $1,350 a week. Real estate reporting showed it being offered again in 2025 at about $1,450 a week.
Mr Albanese and Ms Tebbutt previously owned another Marrickville house nearby, purchased as an investment in 2012 for $1.115 million. That property, at 95 Beauchamp Street, directly overlooked the golf course and was sold in July 2021 for $2.35 million.
That property should not be confused with the Marrickville house Mr Albanese continues to declare today.
His remaining Marrickville property was bought in 2006 and remained in his ownership after the separation from Ms Tebbutt.
Auditor-General puts grants program on work program
Scrutiny of the broader funding scheme is now extending beyond the daily political argument.
On September 8, Auditor-General Caralee McLiesh responded to a request from opposition MP Ben Small seeking performance audits of the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program and another government grants scheme.
The Auditor-General said both programs would be added as potential topics to the Australian National Audit Office’s 2026–27 Annual Audit Work Program.
That is a significant development, but it is not yet the same as a completed audit or a finding of wrongdoing. The ANAO said that if the potential audits proceed, their scopes will be published.
The Greens have also been pushing for parliamentary scrutiny of how the MLCI projects were chosen, including the role of ministers in determining which organisations were invited to apply and whether any actual or perceived conflicts existed.
For Mr Albanese, the central defence remains that the Marrickville project was a legitimate election commitment delivering community infrastructure in an electorate he has represented since 1996, and that the grant itself went through departmental assessment with Ms King as the relevant decision-maker.
For his critics, the unresolved question comes earlier: how a golf club with such close and longstanding links to the local Prime Minister came to be among the projects selected for an invitation under a program that was closed to the general public.
The discovery that Mr Albanese continues to own a valuable investment property near the precinct does not answer that question.
But it ensures the political and integrity scrutiny surrounding the $6.05 million project is unlikely to disappear quickly.
