Myself with Senator Sturl’s remarks in that regard, and note that Helen had a particular interest in relation to the matters which we’re discussing today. Professor Toomey, I’ll out myself and say that I’ve advocated very, very strongly for projects in the region where my office is located, in the Greater Ipswich region, which is one of the fastest-growing areas of Australia, and which I don’t believe has received its fair share of funding from an infrastructure perspective, given the population growth and the and the the challenges facing many of the people living in outer urban areas, which would probably be similar in other capital cities, so I’m I’m going to make that statement up front to put everything I say in context. And as long as I’m a senator, I’ll continue to advocate for projects which benefit the people who I represent. So, and the the point I’m making with that is, all of us as elected representatives, we’re out there. Those of us work hard in the community. We’re seeing the contribution that are made by local community groups. We see the the importance of of infrastructure of this type or other types. The difference it makes to the community. We’re on the ground, so we’re not. And and this is not to denigrate our our public service, but we’re actually on the ground in our community. We see the day-to-day struggles of sporting clubs, other clubs which help keep the community together, bring people together. Do you accept that there is an important role in relation to local representatives and senators advocating for their communities, fighting so that their communities get a fair share.
Yes, I do absolutely. I completely agree that local politicians are very well connected into the community. It’s their job, and they have to be, and they will be more connected into the community than any public servants who are making assessments of merit in relation to projects, so I completely agree with that. I think that members of parliament should be able to advocate for their area, and they should be able to, you know, make submissions on behalf of their electorate when explaining why, you know, this particular project is needed here because they do have that kind of knowledge, so all of that is absolutely fine. That’s part of the process, and that’s appropriate. The concern I have is where you have projects where it’s just the local politician who gets to nominate, who gets to apply for the money, and to exclude everybody else. You should have a process in which you know it’s open, so that other people can apply too. And in that assessment process, it can be seen that oh look, there are other projects that need these this money, and you know they are more meritorious or they have the greater need, etc. The other point to make is that in relation to these kinds of projects, you know if you have a system that’s open, and you have criteria that people have to comply with and are judged against, and you have that process, and it’s done by public servants and all the rest of it, and then it comes to the decision maker. If the decision maker is, for example, a minister or politicians, and sometimes they are, there will be circumstances where it is appropriate for an override to occur if the relevant minister has particular knowledge which shows why a decision that was made was inappropriate. So, on occasion, I have seen explanations, written explanations by ministers as to why a decision that was made should be overridden, and the explanation is compelling. So there, I mean, I know Senator McKenzie is on this committee, and in fact, I saw one example where she gave a very compelling reason as to why some spending-I think it was on some telecommunications thing-needed to be done slightly differently, and and if politicians do that and can explain it and justify it, I think that’s absolutely fine. Where the problem lies is where politicians do come in and override, but they’re actually doing so solely for party political purposes. And then when you see their paperwork saying why did they override? They’ll say something like, “Oh, this is a good project, and they give no reasons whatsoever, and there’s no basis for it. So we’re dealing with two different things here, and so it is appropriate for politicians to advocate for their community. They do have an exceptional amount of inside knowledge as. To what is needed, and that needs to be respected, but it’s not always the reason why these kinds of decisions are made. And if you have an open process with proper criteria and merit applying, etc. you’re more likely to get better outcomes.
Well, do you do you also accept? And I appreciate that response, and especially the fact that there are occasions when, say, a minister who’s the decision maker, provide they’re not conflicted, could come to the view that they override a bureaucratic decision and state in a transparent way the reasons for that. And I think I agree for that, and I’ve certainly lobbied a minister successfully in the past in relation to doing just that, which he did. And that project’s been extraordinarily successful, and has received funding from now this government as well as the previous government. Do you acknowledge the? And I think it’s a fact that an election provides an opportunity for people in the community to to raise projects which they want to see advanced. And because of the nature of democratic politics, it is an opportunity for for promises to be given, and ideally, the best position-I say this to community organisations-the best position you can be in is if, if both sides, both governing parties, actually support the same project, right? So you can actually get some positive results for the community as a result of the election process At a local level,
yeah, it’s obviously timely in terms of getting people’s attention. So I think a lot of the electorate feels neglected in between elections. So I can understand why people immediately before an election seek to have their views heard and show why particular projects are good, but what I’m arguing about, and I think also we need to distinguish between different types of things. So the type of thing I’m talking about are these broad funding pools that are used for projects across the country. Every now and again, there will be other types of things that are very specific things that are individually funded. So you know, if there’s some kind of massive thing like a you know development of a port or something or other, that’s not going to fall into one of these types of schemes. The sort of thing I’m talking about are general schemes that apply across the country. And what I’m really arguing about is that those general schemes need to be open, so that everybody who has a good reason can come along and say, rather than just being tapped on the shoulder by whoever the local member
is. Okay, one of the things that really does concern me about this scheme, and I think raises material questions of equity and fairness is that based on the analysis undertaken for the center for integrity for public integrity, 45 electorates, federal electorates, received nothing under this program. So 30% of the population, 30% of the communities around this country receive nothing under this program. And as you say, it’s a closed program. So projects which are in those 45 electorates, community organizations within those 45 electorates, don’t have any opportunity to make applications which could perhaps have been considered on the basis of equitable distribution of funds across Australia under this program. I see that as a major law in relation to this scheme, that 30% of electorates receive nothing under the scheme, and there’s no opportunity for community organizations within that 30% of electorates to actually apply to obtain funding. What’s your view with respect to that characteristic or attribute of this scheme that 30% of federal electorates receive nothing and had no opportunity to apply.
Yeah. So again, my concern is that it’s a closed scheme, and that it’s not done on the basis of merit, and so that is an issue. Now, it may not necessarily be the case that every electorate should get the same funding in relation to everything. There may be good reasons why some electorates need certain things that other electorates don’t, or some electorates have been, you know, well supported and others don’t. So, of itself, it’s not necessarily the case that some electorates missed out that shows that the scheme is wrong, but what does show that. Scheme as wrong is that they had no opportunity to actually make submissions and seek money and have that money determined on an equal, sorry, on a meritorious basis. The other point I’d make is that the the thing that concerned me most when I started looking at this, and in particular, in relation to the Marrickville Golf Club, was simply that when I looked back, I looked on Grant Connect to see what grants had been given to it, and so many small grants had been given to it, and every single one of those grants was a closed, non-competitive scheme, and that that was the point at which it really struck me as to how much these non-competitive closed schemes apply. But the interesting thing about part of it was that some of those grants in this to this particular place were given when the opposition was in power, and I thought, well, that’s funny because that might suggest you not got pork barrelling going on here. And then when I looked at it, and I discovered that they were no, they were closed, non-competitive schemes. But they were schemes where every electorate effectively is given the same amount of money, and then whoever the local member is gets to again tap people on the shoulder and say, “Well, you put in for this money, and you can have it. Now, I know people will then argue, well, that’s not pork barrelling because it was fair, because the same amount went to every electorate, and whoever the local member was got to decide. But it’s still not quite fair, is it? Because a whoever’s in government will have more seats in the lower house, and therefore their side will still get more money from it, so it sort of is pork barrelling. But the second reason again is that because it’s non-competitive, you know, it may well be that some electorates are being feather bedded because they’re getting things that they don’t need, and another electorate here really, really needed that money for something else. So again, my view: the fairer system would be to have open and competitive processes where everybody has a chance to try and meet the relevant criteria and get money on the basis of merit, rather than someone coming along and saying, “Well, you know, we want to give you money, put your application in, and you don’t have to compete with anyone else for it.
