(Image Tom Red/Private Media)

To coincide with the return of incompetent rorter Bridget McKenzie to cabinet, the auditor-general yesterday released a report showing how the pros rort taxpayer funds.

McKenzie’s sports rorts were a lousy $100 million spent trying to win marginal seats. Alan Tudge and Michael McCormack’s National Commuter Car Park Fund is three quarters of a billion dollars and counting, and part of a much bigger pork-barrel called the Urban Congestion Fund (UCF), currently up to $4.8 billion.

For all the outrage about her blatant rorting, McKenzie was splashing in the toddlers’ pool while Tudge and McCormack were doing laps in the Olympic-size trough.

When the UCF was first established, during the Turnbull government, the idea was that the government would invite project proponents — basically, the states — to “make submissions and a competitive, merit-based selection process would be used, with guidelines issued publicly”. Scott Morrison’s Treasury supported this approach because “a competitive, merit-based selection process” would “ensure the highest congestion reduction at the lowest cost”.

Michael McCormack’s Department of Infrastructure had a different idea: that the Commonwealth pick the projects itself. After Turnbull was ousted and Morrison became prime minister, Infrastructure won the argument. It was decided the scheme would be entirely driven by the Commonwealth — it would pick the projects and tell states where the funding was being allocated.

And there would be no process for picking them. No guidelines, or criteria, no performance indicators, no evaluation criteria. No governance processes. Some token study of congestion was done, but the only framework for the then-billion dollar budget was some vague “principles” .

In late 2018, as the new Morrison government faced the prospect of a heavy defeat at the coming election, Tudge’s office demanded a new element of the program, specifically targeting car parks. The National Commuter Car Park Fund was thus born in the 2019 pre-election budget with an initial $500 million allocation, later to be significantly expanded. Again, with no guidelines, criteria or process for selecting projects to ensure taxpayers got value for money. Just some loose talk that the government might consult with other parties about projects.

To start the program off, the department sent to Tudge’s office a list of 19 possible projects. Tudge’s office sent back its own suggestions. A list that was about half departmental projects and half Tudge’s projects was then taken to a meeting between Tudge and Morrison. They agreed 39 projects initially, only nine of which were suggested by the department (and one of those was abandoned). By the middle of 2019, with the addition and removal of projects based on advice from by Liberal and National MPs and state ministers, number had grown to 47, none of which had been departmental recommendations.

How were the projects selected by Morrison and Tudge? The ANAO shows — the program was aimed at marginal seats (like Labor-held Lindsay) or at shoring up Melbourne Liberal seats the government was terrified would be wiped out in the same way the Victorian state Liberals had been wiped out.

How can the government and the department simply pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a transparently political program? Two ways.

First, the whole program is established under a Commonwealth-state partnership agreement called the Federation Funding Agreement — Infrastructure. That has its own rules and specifically is not a grants program — therefore the usual rules around grants, like having a proper process for selecting projects or checking that they’re value for money, don’t apply. It’s the equivalent of Bridget McKenzie getting the Sports Commission to pretend to be handing out sports rorts grants, because it wasn’t subject to the Commonwealth Grant Rules and Guidelines.

Second, the department and Tudge’s replacement now, the useless Paul Fletcher, insist they were all “election commitments”.

In the public service, saying something is an “election commitment” is like sprinkling magic pixie dust over it. All accountability, transparency and good administration requirements vanish. Election commitments, portrayed as some sort of solemn democratic contract with the electorate, are to be implemented come what may and no impediments will be tolerated. Infrastructure Secretary Simon Atkinson in his angry response to the ANAO insists everything about the car park program was fine because they were election commitments.

Except, the ANAO isn’t subject to that sort of bureaucratic groupthink. It even disputes most of the projects were election commitments in the first place. Atkinson says most of the projects were picked by Morrison and Tudge the day before the government entered caretaker mode in 2019 and thus became election commitments. ANAO replies that that’s the point — they were decided before the election was called.

Moreover, the ANAO points out — and this is a killer blow that Atkinson doesn’t address — the funding for them was included in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which is a budget document, not a campaign promise. So only seven of the projects actually decided and announced during the election campaign were “election commitments”.

The broader point, not made by the ANAO, is that “election commitments” are code for “bribing the electorate”, and the government went all-out in the 2019 election to bribe its way back into office.

Bureaucratic arguments over where something was formally an election commitment or not are unlikely to to excite people inside Canberra, let alone outside it. But it demonstrates just how utterly corrupt this government. All governments pork-barrel and try to bribe voters.

But none have done so so blatantly, and with such blatant contempt, for its own rules, or any thought for good government or value for taxpayer money. No wonder Bridget McKenzie is back in Cabinet. Her crime was being an amateur among professionals.