Political Pork Barrelling: How Grants Are Used to Buy Marginal Seats
By Direct Democracy
Every election cycle, hundreds of millions of dollars in public money flows not to where it's needed most, but to where it can buy the most votes. This is pork barrelling - and both major parties have turned it into an art form at the expense of Australian taxpayers.
What Is Pork Barrelling?
Pork barrelling is the practice of directing government grants, infrastructure spending, and public funding toward electorates for political gain rather than on the basis of merit or need. In plain terms: instead of asking "where will this money do the most good?", governments ask "where will this money win us the most votes?"
It's not technically illegal in Australia. There's no law preventing a minister from favouring their own electorate or a key marginal seat when handing out grants. That's part of what makes it so corrosive - it happens openly, repeatedly, and with little consequence.
The Sports Rorts Scandal: A Case Study
The most thoroughly documented example in recent Australian history is the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant program, better known as the Sports Rorts affair.
In the lead-up to the 2019 federal election, the Morrison government distributed $100 million in grants for local sporting infrastructure. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) investigated and found the results were deeply troubling:
- 43% of funded projects had been ranked as ineligible or low-priority by Sport Australia's independent assessment panel
- Projects in marginal Coalition seats received funding at dramatically higher rates than those in safe Labor or safe Liberal seats
- Minister Bridget McKenzie's office maintained a spreadsheet tracking the political colour of each applicant's electorate - and approvals followed accordingly
- One notorious example: a $36,000 grant to a shooting club in a marginal seat that McKenzie herself had joined days before approving the grant
McKenzie eventually resigned - but not over the rorts themselves. She resigned over the conflict of interest in the shooting club grant. The broader political rorting of the program was never subject to serious accountability.
It's Not Just the Coalition
Before Labor supporters feel too comfortable, the practice is thoroughly bipartisan.
In New South Wales, the then-Liberal state government's Stronger Communities Fund was found by the ICAC to have been rorted, but Labor governments have their own track record. In Victoria, the Andrews Labor government faced serious scrutiny over the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program and the Multicultural Community Infrastructure Fund, with auditors finding approvals skewed toward marginal Labor seats and electorates represented by key ministers.
In Queensland, both the LNP and Labor have faced repeated allegations of directing infrastructure and community grants toward marginal seats ahead of state elections.
The pattern is consistent regardless of which party holds power: when ministers have discretion over grant approvals, political considerations dominate merit.
How Much Money Are We Talking About?
The scale is significant. Consider some headline figures:
| Program | Total Value | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Community Sport Infrastructure Grants (2019) | $100 million | 43% of grants went to ineligible/low-ranked projects |
| Safer Communities Fund (various rounds) | $560 million+ | Auditors found funding skewed to government-held seats |
| Building Better Regions Fund | $1.38 billion | Senate inquiry found strong bias toward marginal seats |
| NSW Stronger Communities Fund | $252 million | ICAC found funds used for political purposes |
These are not rounding errors. These are hundreds of millions of dollars in public money that could have funded hospitals, schools, or social housing - allocated instead as electoral advertising paid for by taxpayers.
Why Does It Keep Happening?
The honest answer is: because it works, and because there's almost no cost to doing it.
Grants flowing into a community create goodwill. A new sports pavilion, a upgraded community hall, a safer intersection - these things make residents feel that their local member is delivering for them. Voters often don't know or don't care that the grant was politically motivated. By the time an audit is published - often months or years after the election - the political benefit has already been banked.
The structural problems that enable this include:
- Ministerial discretion over grant approvals, with no legal obligation to follow independent assessments
- Weak accountability mechanisms - ANAO audits have no enforcement power
- No mandatory transparency about how grant decisions are made
- Parliamentary majorities that can block or water down reform proposals
- Both major parties benefit from the system, so neither has a strong incentive to fix it
The Morrison government's response to the Sports Rorts audit was essentially to dispute the methodology. The Albanese government has promised greater integrity in grants, but has moved slowly on structural reforms and retains ministerial discretion in most programs.
Who Pays the Price?
Everyone outside marginal seats. If you live in a safe seat - whether it's safe Labor in western Sydney or safe Liberal in Sydney's north shore - your community's grant applications go to the bottom of the pile. Your needs are taken for granted.
Beyond geography, the deeper cost is institutional trust. When people see that public money flows based on political arithmetic rather than community need, it corrodes confidence in government itself. And that cynicism is entirely rational - because in this case, it's warranted.
What Direct Democracy Changes
This is precisely the kind of policy failure that direct democracy is designed to prevent.
When a small group of ministers holds unchecked discretion over hundreds of millions of dollars, the incentive to abuse that power is overwhelming. The current system is built for pork barrelling. But when citizens vote directly on how public money is allocated - when grant criteria are set by the people rather than ministers, and when spending decisions require genuine public accountability - the political calculation changes entirely.
Voters, given a direct say, would not choose to fund marginal-seat sports clubs over evidence-based community need. They would not design a grants program with the explicit goal of rewarding political allies. The entire rorts model depends on removing citizens from the decision-making process.
Reforming grants integrity is technically straightforward: publish all applications, publish all assessments, require funded projects to score above an independent threshold, and remove ministerial discretion. These reforms haven't happened because the people who would implement them benefit from the status quo.
Direct democracy breaks that loop.
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