(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

The potential for the normalisation of pork-barrelling has emerged as an election issue after it was revealed Labor is promising $750 million in community projects in the lead-up to the expected mid-May election.

These projects, which The Sydney Morning Herald reports today would benefit “dozens” of electorates including marginal seats, bring to mind the so-called “sports rorts” affair of 2019.

The Coalition government has been accused of favouring electorally sensitive seats in the distribution of $102 million in grants to sporting organisations. Labor argues its pledges are normal electioneering.

Opposition infrastructure spokeswoman Catherine King called attacks on the funding promises “a desperate attempt at distraction from a desperate government”.

“There’s nothing unusual about political parties making election commitments,” King told Crikey in a statement.

“The real scandal is the Morrison-Joyce government repeatedly using billion-dollar budgeted funds for political purposes when they have been in government for nearly a decade.”

King says Labor had “worked hard to choose projects that have the support of local and state governments around Australia, in both Labor- and Coalition-held seats”.

“Compare that to four car parks that the treasurer [Josh Frydenberg] had to cancel in his own seat because local councils and community groups didn’t want a bar of them,” she said.

“If the government is so concerned with standards in political life, why don’t they join with Labor in committing to a real national anti-corruption commission?”

But Finance Minister Simon Birmingham accused Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese of hypocrisy.

“Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party have spent the last three years railing against the idea that grants could be doled out on the basis of whether or not it was a marginal seat,” he said on RN Breakfast.

”I have defended the fact that we took promises to the last election for grants, and we delivered upon those promises.”

Birmingham then appeared to confirm the government had spent taxpayer money to protect its political interests, rather than on merit, by saying: “And now they are exposed as doing exactly the same. It’s the hypocrisy that I am calling out, the rank hypocrisy. What it means is that Anthony Albanese has been lying to you and to everybody else when he said he would take a different approach.”

However, the Morrison government did break a high-profile election promise when it abandoned its $660 million commuter car park pledge — “car pork” — when it was criticised by the auditor-general for the political weighting of the 47 community recipients.

The list of Labor pledges would go to the Infrastructure Department for evaluation, as recommended by the Australian National Audit Office.

An example of the projects is the announced by King last week for the Sydney seat of Reid. The announcement was made jointly with Labor’s candidate in the Liberal-held seat: “An Albanese Labor government will partner with the city of Parramatta and commit $8.5 million to progress the Hill Road master plan, including a much-needed upgrade to the central spine of Wentworth Point. Over the last 10 years, Wentworth Point has transformed from an industrial zone into a growing residential hub with a population.”

Pork-barrelling has become a political issue of trust since sports rorts, and last November former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian claimed it was standard procedure.   

“I don’t think it would be a surprise to anybody that we throw money at seats to keep them,” she said.