The federal government is fending off accusations of hypocrisy following the revelation its Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program is little more than a half-billion-dollar pork-barrelling exercise. The audacity of an invitation-only scheme designed to funnel taxpayer money predominantly into Labor-held and swing electorates is stark. It easily rivals, and arguably surpasses, the infamous sports rorts saga of the previous Coalition government.
While the former administration faced intense and justified scrutiny for its partisan grant allocations, this latest infrastructure scheme introduces a new level of brazen exclusion. Electorates without a competitive Labor presence were simply frozen out of the process altogether. As independent Member for Indi Helen Haines noted, the difference between sports rorts and this Labor rort is a matter of design versus deception. Community need should always supersede political need, yet taxpayers are watching half a billion dollars deployed purely as a political tool.
