The head of the New South Wales anti-corruption watchdog has cited the Berejiklian government’s notorious $252m Stronger Communities fund as a clear example of pork-barrelling, saying almost its sole motive was political, calling it “clearly on the other side of the line”.
Peter Hall QC, the chief commissioner of the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac), told a forum, examining the legality of pork-barrelling in politics, that the fund was “on the other side of the line” of what was “permissible”.
In February, the NSW auditor general released a scathing report into the fund that found it “lacked integrity” and did not use any consistent guidelines in awarding more than 95% of money to local councils in Coalition state seats.
The report found former premier Gladys Berejiklian and deputy premier John Barilaro had personally chosen projects to fund with “little or no information about the basis” for their selections. It revealed that, in a 2018 briefing note, Berejiklian’s staff wrote that they were working to “get the cash out the door in the most politically advantageous way”.
Hall said there was often “mixed motives” in cases where there had been a suggestion of pork-barrelling, and that it was “quite permissible” for politicians to make funding decisions which they hoped would have political advantage if it was also in the public interest.
“But if you get a decision, lets take the Stronger Communities grants fund case, I mean there’s no argument, there is in fact, as the auditor general’s report discovered in that case, a document, which is a briefing note to the premier’s office and that briefing note was to the effect ‘we’ve got the money out the door and it’s hitting the political target’,” Hall said on Friday.
“I mean you couldn’t have it any clearer than that as to what the motive was. So that was, you’d almost say the sole motive [or] the sole purpose of that exercise was political or electoral and that’s clearly on the other side of the line.
“I think one has to acknowledge the political reality that it’s not all together quite simple because there’s often more than one motive for a person’s actions.”
Friday’s forum was organised by the Icac on the back of a report it commissioned by constitutional law expert Anne Twomey, which called for the practice of pork-barrelling to be banned.
The Icac plans to publish its own report on pork-barrelling, “including whether and how it relates to corrupt conduct”, on the back of the forum. It follows a series of scathing auditor general reports on grant funding decisions made by the NSW government.
A review of the government’s grant spending, released last month by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, recommended administrators document when ministers and politicians try to influence the grants process.
But it concluded that pork-barrelling should not become a criminal offence, something Twomey argued did not go far enough because it “avoids consequences for ministers if they breach those rules or encourage others to do so”.
She has called for a mechanism to enforce ministerial obligations when making grant funding decisions. On Friday, Twomey told the forum that existing ministerial codes of conduct were “useless”.
“Let be clear about this – they are deliberately written to allow as much misbehaviour as you can possibly get away with,” she said.
Twomey, from the University of Sydney, told the forum “something I probably should not admit publicly” about previously being tasked with drafting a code of conduct while working in the legal branch of the NSW public service.
“We formed a beautiful one on the basis of best practice and it went to cabinet and I got called up to the cabinet door and they said, ‘nope we’re not doing any of that’,” she said.
She said a different code of conduct was “dictated to me from the cabinet room”.
“They didn’t want proper rules and restrictions on their powers in the code of conduct at all,” she said.
