Queensland is certainly basking in the sun of election-time largesse — the two major parties have pledged a whopping $19 billion between them for the state in campaign promises. Meanwhile, South Australia got just $16.3 million in spending promises. And no, that’s not a typo — that’s million, not billion.
Is the election campaign about providing a helping hand to areas which deserve greater funding — or is it pork barrelling? Crikey has used our online Cash Tracker, which keeps track of every promise made by the major parties, to map out where the major parties want to spend your money.
We’ve found all roads lead to Queensland this election, in large part due to promises to fund highway upgrades (funnily enough, there are plenty of must-win seats there too). New South Wales is doing very well by the Liberals (there’s quite a few seats up for grabs in western Sydney, by the way), and the Coalition has also pledged a significant amount of money to Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania (the Coalition could pick up three or four seats in Tassie).
Labor is being a little more sparing with its state-based promises, with a few bob for NSW, a bit for Victoria and a little taste of sugar for SA (less than what the ALP has promised for Tasmania, mind you).
So what did the poor old Northern Territory do wrong? It has largely missed out on promises from both sides.
Here’s our Crikey map, showing promises made by the major parties of more than $1 million, which relate to a particular state or geographic area (we’ve left out general nation-wide policies). It’s current as of this morning:
And here’s the same information shown in interactive form. We’ve dropped a pin for every promise so you can drill down into the detail. Click on the image below; when you’ve done that, use your mouse’s scroll wheel or the on-screen controls to zoom in on the map, and click the pins to see the details of the promises made for that location …
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.