A bulky submission to a Senate inquiry from former sports minister Bridget McKenzie doesn’t include an explanation of prime minister Scott Morrison’s office rejigging sport funding on the day the election was called last year.

In fact the Nationals backbench senator appears to keep her distance from the prime minister and insists she was not aware of applications for funds being colour-coded according to the party representing the electorate.

In the document sent to the inquiry into allegations of political favouritism in handing out sports grants McKenzie makes no admissions of mismanagement.

However it is likely she will be directly questioned on matters by the committee next month should a suitable system for a virtual hearing be available.

The success of the Senate oversight committee looking at the response to the coronavirus pandemic has shown hearings can be useful without all participants having to be in a committee room in Parliament House.

McKenzie’s lengthy submission – 6,000 words long by one calculation – provides no detailed explanation of her authority to sign off on grants or the role of then PM’s office in final decisions.

She rejects claims her office used terms “marginal” and “targeted” in reference to electorates where sporting clubs had applied for cash. She says she neither saw nor received the coded documents.

“I am advised that these terms were obtained from a memo with an attached spreadsheet, emailed by a former ministerial adviser to themself,” she has written.

She claimed a review of the grants scheme by the Australian National Audit Office asserted, “apparently based on this singular email, that there was a marginal seat strategy conducted within my office that influenced the success of grant applications”.

“The ANAO argues that this former adviser’s memo underpinned the methodology of my office. I unequivocally reject this premise and the facts themselves contradict it.”

McKenzie lost her ministry because she did not disclose she was a member of a gun club which received close to $36,000 from the grants scheme, not because of the handling of the grants program.

Her defence does not explain why or by whom her final allocation of grants was altered within the prime minister’s office on the afternoon of 11 April last year, the day the general election was officially called.

Morrison has rejected Labor claims of interference in the process, saying his office had only passed on representations for grant consideration made to it.

McKenzie has said her final list of successful applicants was lodged with the prime minister’s office on 4 April.