More than a quarter of all projects funded in the third and fourth rounds of Labor’s regional development Australia fund (RDAF) were not recommended for funding by its advisory council, an audit has found.
The Australian national audit office (ANAO) report found that in May 2013, then Labor minister for regional services Catherine King provided over $108m for projects that RDAF’s independent panel had not recommended.
King signed off on 121 capital infrastructure projects in rounds three and four of the fund, worth $226m in total.
In round four, “the minister made 34 decisions that diverged from the recommendations of the panel”, the report said. That’s 80% of the 42 projects that were funded in round four.
“This is the greatest reminder of the worst of the excesses of the former government,” assistant minister for infrastructure Jamie Briggs said.
Briggs said Labor used the public purse to “prop up” their election chances.
“They tried to use taxpayer money to sandbag their electorates,” Briggs told reporters on Thursday. “They awarded contracts on the basis of political need in the months of a government coming to a rightful end.
80% of the rejected projects fell in Coalition-held seats. Conversely, 64% of the “not recommended” projects which were ultimately adopted fell in Labor-held seats.
Labor said the vast majority of infrastructure projects were undertaken in seats held by other parties or independents.
“The report confirms that two-thirds of the projects funded across rounds three and four of RDAF were in seats not held by Labor,” a spokesman for King said. “78 of the 121 projects were funded in Coalition, independent or other seats.”
“Just 43 – or 35% – of the projects were in Labor held seats,” he said.
The spokesman said a large grant worth $7.5m was given to a project in Brigg’s own electorate of Mayo, in South Australia.
The ANAO report did not list individual infrastructure projects on their merits but rather looked at funding as a whole. The majority of the projects have now been completed, and Briggs said it is the government’s policy to honour previously-held contracts to give projects certainty.
Labor has in the past criticised the Coalition’s distribution of infrastructure funding. In 2007, shortly after Labor won office, the auditor general’s office released a report similar to the ANAO’s report.
“The report of the auditor general’s investigation into regional rorts … confirms that the Coalition has used the program for the pursuit of its own political advantage,” then regional minister Simon Crean said in November 2007.
“This damning report backs Labor’s longstanding concerns about a serious lack of rigour and transparency in the assessment and approval of regional partnerships grants by the Howard
government.”
Labor promised a suite of measures to clean up the way infrastructure grants were managed, including the introduction of RDAF’s independent advisory council.
