Opposition leader Peter Dutton is promising a return to Morrison-era electoral bribery with his “safety grants”, fuelling integrity concerns which drove the Teals movement. Michael Pascoe reports.
Once you get a taste for addictive drugs, they are hard to give up. So it is with politicians and “pork barrelling”, the common euphemism for blatant, large-scale corruption.
And make no mistake, the many billions of dollars dished out in electorate bribes during the Coalition’s last innings did amount to corruption on a far greater scale than the usual “they all do it” promise of a bridge across the creek.
Now the SMAge ($) reports Peter Dutton is offering a return to that trough under the guise of “safety grants” for local projects in seats of interest. Some $400,000 here to fix lighting at the Malvern Cricket Club in Kooyong, another $1.3m there for a “youth skills initiative’ in Dutton’s seat of Dickson.
Having documented billions of dollars’ worth of grant corruption under the Coalition, Dutton’s “safety grants” perfectly fit the MO of the previous Safer Communities Fund and the Coalition’s much larger and worse Community Development Grants racket.
The Rigs are Getting Bigger: Michael Pascoe on Community Development Grants rorts
Pork barreling defined
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Operation Jersey investigation into “pork barrelling” found:
Defined as ‘the allocation of public funds and resources to targeted electors for partisan political purposes.
The ICAC concluded that pork barrelling can, under certain circumstances, involve serious breaches of public trust and conduct that amount to corrupt conduct.
It is little surprise, however, that the gonadless National Anti-Corruption Commission found that topic all too hard, effectively giving a tick of approval to what the ICAC finds corrupt. Given a referral with conclusive evidence of corrupt conduct by the Morrison Government, the NACC “decided to take no further action”.
The Morrison government and, to a lesser extent, the Turnbull and Abbott governments before it, allocated $3.2B in Community Development Grants (CDG) overwhelmingly along party political lines, rather than the basis of greatest need and doing the greatest good.
The CDG were invented by the Abbott Government to specifically avoid public service vetting. The grants were pretty much at the whim of the local Liberal or National Party member. Abetted and assisted by a plethora of other grants and rorts schemes including the afore mentioned Safer Communities Fund, the Coalition ran the biggest financial breach of public trust in our history.
The cash was dished out in ways that ranged from the rather petty, buttressing of golf clubs in Coalition electorates to highly dubious grants to successful businesses run by Coalition supporters.
Thank you Bridget!
We should all give thanks to Bridget McKenzie and the unsung heroes in Prime Minister Morrison’s office for the relatively small beer of “sports rorts”, as it lifted the scab off a much bigger tumour. It piqued the interest of spreadsheet sleuth Vince O’Grady and IT friends to interrogate the grants system and thus uncover the scale of malfeasance.
Using O’Grady’s data as a starting point, I regularly filed on various aspects of corruption for The New Daily. Upon the establishment of the NACC, O’Grady made an official complaint, providing all the data he had accumulated.
Judgement day is coming for Sports Rorts, other Coalition grants schemes
A year later, the NACC dismissed the referral. All that corruption was not “corrupt” by what the NACC chooses to be its standards.
There was nothing wrong with Robodebt either until the NACC was forced to have a second look and still might not be, in its opinion.
Et tu Labor
Of course Labor is not without the whiff of the pork barrel. “You’ll get HECS relief but only if you vote for me”. But there is a difference between targeted local grants in marginal electorates and national road projects run through an assessment system and public health policy initiatives.
There also is a broader question about what each of our three levels of government should be doing.
Somehow cricket club lights in Kooyong or a putt-putt course at a favoured golf club doesn’t fit my idea of Federal Government responsibilities.
Now Peter Dutton is promising to take us back to the worst of the bad old days of blatantly using taxpayers’ money to curry favour in key electorates.
It is obscene.
But if you get away with it once, you’ll do it again. And so they will.
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Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.