The government’s controversial urban congestion fund is pumping tens of millions of dollars more into marginal and safe Coalition seats than strong Labor electorates, a new report has found.
The Grattan Institute on Sunday released a damning report examining the way successive governments have used transport spending promises to further their political interests.
The report found due diligence was overwhelmingly lacking in transport promises made during election campaigns.
At the last election, just one of the 71 Coalition transport promises worth $100m or more was based on a business case approved by Infrastructure Australia.
Labor had business cases for just two of the 61 transport funding announcements it made during the same campaign.
The report found a “long and bipartisan history” of pork-barrelling transport funding.
Since 2004, under two Labor and four Coalition terms of government, the report said there had been a “persistent pattern” of sending more transport dollars to New South Wales and Queensland, states which often decide federal elections.
It also found the urban congestion fund – the government’s much-criticised discretionary funding program for roads and carparks – overwhelmingly went to marginal seats. On average, a marginal urban seat received $83m from the fund and a safe Coalition seat received $64m. Safe Labor seats received just $34m on average, the report found.
Report author Marion Terrill described pork-barrelling in transport funding as an “arms race”.
The quantum being promised by both parties jumped significantly between the last two elections. In 2016, the Coalition promised $5.4bn in transport spending, compared to Labor’s $6.7bn.
By 2019, that had jumped to $42bn for the Coalition and $49bn for Labor.
Terrill said the federal government should concentrate its efforts on nationally-significant infrastructure, rather than hyper-local projects – roundabouts, overpasses, and carparks, for example. The government should also only fund such nationally significant projects after proper due diligence, she said.
“What’s important about transport is that the dollars involved are really big, so when politicians engage in pork-barrelling with transport funding, there’s an awful lot at stake,” Terrill said.
“[It also means] infrastructure gets built in places and of types without any real regard to what’s needed, what the priorities should be and whether it’s even worth it to build this stuff in the first place.”
The report found there was no effective sanction for pork-barrelling. Ministerial standards can be used, but only at the prime minister’s discretion.
Australia’s electoral laws – while prohibiting someone providing, receiving, or offering benefit to influence a vote – do nothing to stop a party promising to spend public money to advance its own political advantage.
Criminal sanctions exist for abuse or misconduct of public office, but they are rarely pursued, the report says.
“On the other hand, there is plenty of political upside. The louder the media and public criticism of pork-barrelling, the stronger the ‘evidence’ that ministers are delivering for their communities. Indeed, the criticism arguably is the communications strategy: what’s the point of spending millions on a local project if the locals don’t know about it?”
