Both major parties are pledging billions of dollars of community facilities and infrastructure, leaving bureaucrats with an ethical nightmare of how these funds are to be spent.
and upgrades being announced daily as both parties seek to gain voter support for the federal election.
Behind the scenes, both major parties clearly have sophisticated electoral and polling booth maps to guide where the spending is occurring and what will generate the best electoral outcomes. Most is going to key marginal seats, as incumbents seek to “sandbag” their seats against the typically well-funded campaigns to unseat them.
Pork barrelling has been well practised by all sides of politics, but emerged as a hot political issue after two auditor-general reports revealed the extent of the practice in the run-up to the 2019 election.The auditor-general found almost $600 million of commuter car parks had been allocated by ministerial offices using an elaborate system of spreadsheets of marginal electorates.
This scenario is being repeated across the country, with little transparency or a proper needs-based process. This means that, apart from the shaming that comes from an adverse auditor-general’s report, or media embarrassment, there are few controls on the executive, as long as the funding legislation gives them clear and broad authority.Pork barrelling is as old as democracy. But in recent years, the development of multimillion-dollar community programs that give ministers legal carte blanche to allocate the funds as they see fit, has taken it to a whole new height.
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