Pork-barrelling – a quaint term for an unsavoury political practice – has been around for centuries, but over the past few years in Australia it has received considerable attention, and many people are sick of hearing about it and perhaps even more sick of governments that employ the tactic.
Now, in a new report, think tank the Grattan Institute has called for the practice to undergo a complete overhaul.
The term pork-barrelling has been around for more than 200 years, but it did not always have the negative connotations that plague it today. It referred to pork stored in barrels for later consumption by slaves. In 1863, renowned Boston author Edward Everett Hale used the term pork barrel as a metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry.
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Ostensibly, that is a good thing, but just a decade later, it had become a derogatory term for misuse of goods (not just pork) or funds by governments.
Surviving to this day, the term gets a regular run in many western nations, and Australia is no exception. The most recent federal examples include the Morrison government’s so-called ‘sports rorts’ scheme, and on a state level, Victorian Labor Premier Dan Andrews has come under fire for his government’s Suburban Rail Loop project, which opponents claim will benefit only Labor seats.
It is not the allocation of funds for public use that disgruntles many, it is perception that the allocation benefits only those ‘on the side’ of the government doing the allocating.
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In the Grattan Institute report, New politics: Preventing pork-barrelling, published in August, authors Danielle Wood, Kate Griffiths and Anika Stobart argue that the practice is wasteful and undermines trust in governments – even though it is common in Australia.
They note that under the previous Coalition government, more than twice as much discretionary grant funding was allocated to government seats, on average, compared to Opposition seats. Looking at some state government grant programs, it was more than three times as much.
Most of the current rules designed to prevent the politicisation of grant programs leave politicians too much wiggle room, the Grattan Institute says.
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To crack down on pork-barrelling the report has several recommendations, including:
- ensuring grant programs be open, competitive and merit-based
- allowing ministers to establish grant programs and define the selection criteria, but preventing them from being involved in the selection of grant recipients
- the creation of a multi-party standing parliamentary committee to oversee compliance and investigate any deviation from the rules
- increasing funding for auditors-general across the country to enable wider and more frequent auditing of grant programs.
This “taking the pork off the table would improve the quality of public spending and strengthen our democracy”, the authors argue.
Such an approach, signed off by all parties, would seem a practical solution that would deliver appropriate funding to worthy recipients. But practicality has been sacrificed at the hands of greed all too often in the past.
It remains to be seen if governments of any persuasion – state and or federal – are capable of stymying a practice that has existed for centuries and delivers what is truly best for their constituents.
Are you sick of government pork-barrelling? Has the Grattan Institute got the right idea? Why not share your experience and thoughts in the comments section below?
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