The former government defended the allocation of projects, saying decisions were based on need. 9News
Since 2016, the Building Better Regions Fund has splashed cash for community hubs, holiday parks, jetties, sporting facilities and more around regional Australia, almost 1300 projects in total.Labor, then in opposition, accused the Coalition of pork barrelling, dubbing the scheme "regional rorts".
Nationals-held seats were given 29 per cent more — $104 million — across five rounds of funding "than would have been the case had the results of the merit assessment process been relied upon". "The decisions about the award of grant funding across each of the five funding rounds were not appropriately informed by departmental advice, particularly with respect to the third and fifth rounds," the ANAO wrote.
"There were inadequate records of the inputs to the decision-making process and the basis for decisions to approve projects assessed as less meritorious against the four published merit criteria and to reject applications assessed as having higher merit." She said it was important to recognise departmental decision-makers were based in cities rather than regional Australia.
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