‘A big red flag’: Labor accused of pork-barrelling

From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. The Albanese government has been accused of pork barreling after an analysis found almost ninety percent of seats that were held or won by Labor at the last election had received grants totaling one point three five billion dollars. Labour has defended the grants, saying they were campaign commitments that

Hi Ruby, great to be with you.

So you've done some analysis looking into the way the Infrastructure Department has spent some grant funds since the last election. To begin with, could you tell me a bit about why this is something that you wanted to look into. Where it began for you?

Yeah, when I was elected to parliament in twenty nineteen, a large part of my platform was around improving transparency and accountability in government, improving integrity and really sticking up for rural.

And regional Australia.

So for me, I'm always very conscious about where taxpayer dollars is being spent.

And of course during the.

Previous parliament we saw some significant pork barreling that was identified car park.

Roots, sports ruts and the like.

The Morrison government has been accused of pork barreling on a grand scale after it was field, almost two billion dollars in taxpayer funded grants was pushed into coalition electorates.

Cabinet Minister Bridget mackenzie approved a thirty six thousand dollar taxpayer funded grant for a clay target shooting club in regional Victoria without publicly disclosing she was a member.

It stinks more than a bucket of prawn heads that you left out on a hot day light today.

So being an independent I am alive to this happening, irrespective of who's in government. So I had to look at what the Labor government promised during the election campaign in twenty twenty two and followed the trail of where some of that election promise money went and so what did you discover? So I had a close look at two grant programs that went to sporting clubs various organizations to do things like improved swimming pools, build grand stands

Now, to me, that was a great big red flag around a.

Pork barrel, right okay. And so you took these concerns to the Infrastructure Minister, to Catherine King. Can you tell me about that?

So I went to her and said, I have a real concern about these two programs. And in contrast to the one point three five billion dollars for the non competitive grants for these election promises, we had less money allocated across rule and regional Australia for competitive grant programs. I take the view that the New South Wales IKAC made that when public funds and resources are targeted to electors for partisan purposes, that's pork barreling.

Right.

What did she say back to you about that?

Well, the Minister and I have a fundamental disagreement about this. I think all major party senior people believe that it is absolutely reasonable and fine, and this is just the way business is done during election campaign that oppositions and governments go out and make promises. So the Minister and I have a different view of this. So that's how

The Order to General.

It's ultimately up to the Order to General to decide whether there is time in their work schedule to take a look at this.

Right, and this issue, the issue of how grant money is allocated and whether it's done so in a fair way, it's not you, So can you tell me about how you've witnessed this in your own electorate over the years, as major parties have attempted to try and win it back.

When I ran in twenty nineteen, there was Prime ministerial visits.

There were promises of all sorts of.

Infrastructure, and one was on our major highway, was to create an overpass in a difficult intersection. The McCoy Street intersection has long been described as a death trap.

Fifty trucks a day go through the intersection.

David Byrne has witnessed several near misses. There was significant federal funds promised by the then Morrison government and ultimately

The notoriously dangerous intersection is one of fifty projects on the chopping block.

The council already slammed by truckies and politicians alike.

And there were many projects not just in my Electric but across Australia that fell into that category. So when projects are promised without complete and careful planning, they often delayed or fall over or have insufficient funds.

You know, ultimately, communities don't always win from this.

In fact, you know there are plenty of examples where ultimately they lose from this. I think it's a really a grgeous practice and I don't think it should continue, and I'll continue to call it out until such a time that we can stab it out. But I know that that's not a view held by the major parties ruby that's a view held by integrity experts such as the Center for Public Integrity, Accountability Roundtable and indeed New

To happen.

Coming up after the break the alb and Easy Government's looming integrity test helen. Integrity in government was a big issue in the last election. A lack of integrity was one of the reasons that the coalition ultimately lost power. So how do you think that this government, the Albanese government is going to be judged on that metric as people come out to vote again.

Well, yes, you're absolutely right, you know, four points to the Albanesi government in the Nationality Corruption Commission being created. However, I think that this government gives less points from me. They have not fulfilled their promises around robusts whistleblower reform and I have very deep concerns about that. Right now, we have mister Richard Boyle, who is you know, a case exemplar of the failures and weaknesses of our whistle blowing laws.

Today, former public servant Richard Boyle will face court in South Australia accused of doing just that, blowing the whistle on dodgy tax practice. Is that these former employer the Australian Tax Office. He'll be represented in court by Kieran Hinder.

I think we've seen the impact of lobbyists and that's been playing out through the various concerns around QUANTUS in the past few weeks, in particular where we have almost unfettered lobbying happening across the Parliament. We don't know what happens behind ministerial doors when lobbyists are there. We don't have open and transparent ministerial.

Diaries, for example.

And I think perhaps the third element is also the jobs for mates, work that Sophis Komp's member for MPELLA has been undertaking.

We cannot be confident that.

Appointments to statutory boards and the likes are completely merit based and not influenced by political favors.

And you mentioned the National Anti Corruption Commission that the Aberenezi government has put in place. You campaigned for its creation for many years. So the knack that we now have, how does it compare to what you had hoped to see established?

Well, Ruby, you're right, we finally achieved passing that legislation gosh, about twenty months ago now, and to Labor Party's credit when they formed government under mister Albanesi, that was very high order of business and I was very happy to engage fulsomely in that process. I wanted some stronger transparency

So how's it gone?

Since the National Anti Corruption Commission has ruled out further investigation into the public officials behind the disastrous robodebt scheme that saw hundreds of thousands of Australian families hounded for debts they didn't owe.

Question.

The Australian public very very disappointed about that and exercised their rights under the legislation to complain to the Inspector of the NAK.

In my mind, the.

Strong legislative authorities of the Inspector have played out in a way that is I think appropriate.

Anti Corruption Commission says it will review its decision not to launch an investigation into the robodet scandal. A review of that decision has been released, claiming the watchdog's commissioner didn't properly deal with a perceived conflict of interest.

There was a finding of misconduct, which subsequently has now led to an eminent person being appointed to reinvestigate whether Robota debt should be investigated by the KNACK.

I mean, everything that you've outlined, to what extent do you think that they point to some fundamental problems? Do you think that there needs to be some sort of overhauls, sort of reform of the KNACK at this point?

I think what this points to is a rocky start to the KNACK. I certainly wish that we hadn't had a finding of this type by the inspector so early on in the standing up of the KNACK. But I feel confident that the role of the inspector, the way the legislation is working, has demonstrated that the legislation is strong and that an inspector without fear or favor can come in and say, look, there's a problem here and it needs to be fixed. So I think that's good.

Deputy chair Ruby.

We have a public hearing ourselves with the KNACK on the twenty second of November, and we will be examining the first year and so there'll be opportunities to ask questions and I'll certainly be doing that.

Helen, thank you so much for your time today.

It's been a pleasure, Ruping. Thanks for the opportunity for a chat.

In a statement, to the Saturday paper, a spokesperson for Minister King said that all projects underwent a rigorous merit assessment to confirm eligibility under the program guidelines and to determine value for taxpayers money. Any projects that did not satisfy these requirements were not approved for funding. Also in the news today, the federal government has earmarked up to eighty million dollars for the regional airline REX, which went