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With every new report of the Auditor-General, the brazen appropriation of billions of dollars worth of taxpayers’ money for the political advantage of the Morrison government becomes more breathtaking.

 

On the night Scott Morrison claimed his “miracle win” in 2019, there was no mention of the Commuter Car Park fund that allocated, without merit or eligibility criteria, $660 million apparently for the sole purpose of shoring up votes in seats the Liberals had identified at risk.

It gives new meaning to the adage that “God helps those who help themselves”.

 

At least we can be grateful for the fearless work of the Auditor-General, carried out despite funding shortfalls seemingly designed to hamper his ability to cast his net wider.

And while this latest audit is scathing in its assessment of abandoned principles of accountability and transparency, the federal government will shrug it off.

This is made all the easier to do because the Auditor, unlike a corruption commission, does not hold headline-grabbing public hearings where senior ministers and public servants are forensically cross-examined.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, whose job is supposed to be a Scrooge-like guardian of the public purse, at the weekend claimed the government already had the absolution of the Australian people.

His words had an eerie ring of familiarity to me after covering the last 10 years of the Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland – probably the most corrupt government in Australian history and that’s saying something.

Senator Birmingham, in reply to a pointed questioning from the ABC’s Insiders host David Speers, said “the Australian people had their chance and voted the government back in at the last election”.

Bjelke-Petersen could not have put it any better. Indeed that was a regular comeback to his many critics.

It worked for 19 years until the Fitzgerald inquiry set up by his deputy premier Bill Gunn, while Bjelke-Petersen was overseas, exposed the rottenness of it all.

 

It also exposed the disingenuous cynicism of hiding behind election results as the ultimate arbiter of what is in the public interest – as if voters’ perceptions are not manipulated and the truth hidden from view as much as possible.

No wonder Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald recommended a permanent corruption commission along the lines of the one in New South Wales, which in turn was modelled on one in Hong Kong.

It is evident Scott Morrison has no appetite to have himself or his government answerable via a strong, independent anti-corruption watchdog.

He would rather the protection of the numbers in Parliament that billions of dollars’ worth of pork barrelling of targeted electorates affords him.

There will be no Bill Gunn-like act of political suicide; Senate estimates has already been told there will be no Commonwealth Integrity Commission established before the election due within 12 months.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, who refused to fully co-operate with an AFP inquiry into her own abuse of state power regarding raids on a union’s offices, is hardly an enthusiast for accountability of that kind.

In September it will be 1000 days since Mr Morrison promised to set up a federal integrity commission this term; the one then-attorney general Christian Porter proposed was condemned as a protection racket by a number of experts.

Former Victorian Appeals Court judge Stephen Charles labelled the Porter proposal as “an attempt to protect ministers, politicians and senior public servants from investigations into serious corruption”.

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says Labor will not have a bar of the Porter model and in that he is supported by the Greens and members of the crossbench in both houses.

Mr Dreyfus says “Morrison would be the first to be called by such a commission”.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese is promising a national integrity commission because issues like the “pork and ride scheme”, as he put it, undermine faith in the political process.

He says “this was a $600 million rort from a government determined to use taxpayers’ money as if it was Liberal and National Party money”.

Maybe it is time to get rid of these discretionary grants programs though Mr Albanese says governments “are elected to make decisions”.

But the time is long overdue to have an independent guardian in place that puts pressure on governments to make better decisions.

Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics

a new low...

 

By Andrew Giles

 

Just before the Audit Office released its scathing indictment of the commuter car parks program, Australia quietly added the auditing profession to our skills shortage list.

These two events really sum up the Morrison government – an outfit obsessed with tactical politics, wholly uninterested in governing, and contemptuous when it comes to governance.

That we are running out of auditors shouldn’t be such a surprise. Sports rorts, female change room rorts, safer communities rorts – the sorry list goes on and on.

 

But the commuter car parks program sets a new standard – a new low.

This $660 million program (part of the $4.8 billion Urban Congestion Fund) involved commitments to build 47 car parks – none of these proposed by the Infrastructure department, 87 per cent of them in either Liberal seats, or seats targeted by the Liberals at the 2019 election.

Two years on: six of these projects have already been abandoned, at least one was never eligible to have been funded and ten weren’t anywhere near train stations. Only two have been completed.

In the rare instances where work is underway, we are looking at massive cost overruns – with ‘value for money’ benchmarking reports ignored.

Four inconvenient facts

The minister now responsible, Paul Fletcher, has been maintaining this week that funding was ‘based on evidence’.

We have to call out this absurd assertion for four reasons.

Firstly, because there was no process that would have enabled any particular project to be assessed against any criteria. Nor for interested communities to put their evidence of local need to government on behalf of harried commuters, struggling to find a park and get to work.

Secondly, because we now know that the initial framework for selection was based on ‘the top twenty marginal seats’. Perhaps Mr Fletcher is talking about the electoral pendulum when he refers to evidence?

 

Thirdly, because it’s been revealed that the actual selection process involved spreadsheets and maps being passed between Minister Tudge’s office and the Prime Minister’s office – with the same PMO staffer who was connected to sports rorts also involved in this.

Fourthly, because the location of the sites chosen makes a nonsense of the claim. Does anyone actually believe that two-thirds of Australia’s park-and-ride needs are in Melbourne – and none of that is in the fast-growing and transit-poor Western Suburbs?

While this minister wasn’t directly responsible for the rorts he’s been forced to defend, it is concerning that he puts forward alternative facts rather than engaging with an audit report that demands a serious response.

In this year’s budget, the Morrison government set themselves up to rort all the way to the next election, with 21 new or topped-up slush funds totalling $4 billion. Not leaving it at that, they also set aside almost $10 billion for projects agreed to by Cabinet but not yet announced.

Liberal slush fund

Paving the way for more of the same, using public money as a Liberal Party slush fund, without process, principle or accountability.
Or shame, for that matter.

Because the Morrison government couldn’t find the money in that budget for the integrity commission they promised heading into the last election.

When we so desperately need a national anti-corruption body. To restore some sense of trust in our political institutions, and to give good policy-making an even chance.

On the same day as the Audit Office report was delivered, the Treasurer solemnly spoke to the Intergenerational Report and the long-term challenges it presents to Australia’s government.

As if in a parallel universe, he pretended away the contribution of his government to the state that we’re in, and pretended that they are serious about anything other than the politics of the moment.

That he hadn’t been up to his neck in car park rorts, and hadn’t filled his budget only weeks earlier with funds equally capable of misuse.

The fact is, that we won’t secure our living standards without doing something to lift our flagging productivity – this must include productive infrastructure investment, based on real evidence, not endless pork barrelling.

Like a train station car park without a train station, this is a road to nowhere.

The Morrison government has to get off it.

 

 

Andrew Giles is the Member for Scullin, and Labor’s shadow minister for multicultural affairs

 

Read more: https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2021/07/23/morrison-car-parks-rorts/

 

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