Michael McGuire: It’s an election budget, so prepare for political bribing – and both sides do it

It’s an election budget, which mean just one thing – bribes for marginal seats, writes Michael McGuire, even though it hurts Australia long term.

So, here we are. The last federal budget before election day.

A budget that arrives at a delicate time for the Australian economy. A national economy still feeling its way back from the stresses and strains of the pandemic, being buffeted by the ongoing fallout from the Russian war in Ukraine, a trade war with China and rising inflation.

Yet what we are told to prepare for is an “election budget”.

A budget that will prioritise the re-election of the Morrison government over the national interest.

It will be a budget of pork-barrelling, of targeted marginal seat announcements, that may or may not eventuate, and to provide as many opportunities as possible for government MPs to don hard hats and hi-vis vests.

That’s the way of modern politics. The goal is generally to manage your way through the next election, rather than long-term nation-building.

If Anthony Albanese, rather than Scott Morrison, were in charge, it’s hard to believe the approach to this budget would be materially different.

Even so, the Morrison government has pushed the concept of buying votes in marginal seats to new levels. There was the $100m sport rorts affair, where the Auditor-General essentially said then-sports minister Bridget McKenzie ignored process, ran her own program and targeted Liberal and marginal seats.

There was the carpark rorts, a $660m fund instigated before the last election to supposedly build 47 commuter carparks. The Australian National Audit Office found: “The department’s approach to identifying and selecting commuter carpark projects for funding commitment was not appropriate. It was not designed to be open or transparent.”

And: “The distribution of projects selected reflected the geographic and political profile of those given the opportunity by the government to identify candidates for funding consideration.”

In essence, the Morrison government asked its own MPs how much money they wanted and where they wanted it spent.

That it was a reckless pre-election spending stunt is obvious as only six carparks have been completed and only another six are under construction.

This month Treasurer Josh Frydenberg abandoned plans for four carparks, worth $65m, in his Kooyong electorate.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The carpark fund was part of the $4bn urban congestion fund. Another pile of government money that has been mainly directed towards marginal seats.

A report this month from the Grattan Institute highlighted the level of irresponsible promises and spending for transport projects from both Liberal and Labor.

It found, before the 2019 election, only one the Coalition’s 71 transport promises valued at more than $100m had a business case approved by Infrastructure Australia. Labor had two cases out of 61.

Within the urban congestions fund, Grattan found the average marginal urban seat received $83m in funding, the average safe Coalition seat received $64m, while in safe Labor electorates the number was $34m.

It also found that this type of pork-barrelling typically favoured states such as NSW and Queensland, where there are more marginal seats to be found.

The political wisdom that all a marginal seats needs is a semi-trailer of money is why Boothby is again drowning in cash.

This time it’s getting $200m to fix up the Marion and Cross roads intersections.

It’s a worthy enough project. It’s a horrible bottleneck, but you have to wonder if anyone would care if it wasn’t in a marginal seat that the government is desperate to hang on to.

As a point of comparison, look at the Gepps Cross intersection in Adelaide’s north.

No matter what direction you come from, Main North Rd, Port Wakefield Rd, Grand Junction Rd, it’s a nightmare.

Earlier this month, The Advertiser ran a story based on figures from finance group Canstar and SA Police that Gepps Cross had more accidents than anywhere else in SA, outside of the CBD.

Is anyone promising loads of money to fix Gepps Cross?

Its problem, in a political sense, is that Gepps Cross is the dividing line between two safe Labor seats. Adelaide, held by Labor by 8.2 per cent and Makin, which it holds by 9.7 per cent. Two seats not in play this federal election, so largely overlooked by both sides.

It’s come to this because political parties regard taxpayers’ money as their own, and because politicians act as if the vast resources of Treasury are more usefully spent to win the next election, rather than to build a better, more efficient, more productive Australia.