This Sydney council has to hand back ‘pork-barrelling millions’ for park that was never built

The NSW Labor government has ordered Hornsby Shire Council to repay $36 million from a controversial grants fund that overwhelmingly favoured Coalition electorates when the Liberals and Nationals were in power.

The Stronger Communities Grant Fund was set up in 2017 to support councils that were forced to merge, but under the former Coalition government, 96 per cent of grants were awarded to councils in Liberal and National seats, including some that never merged, such as Hornsby.

Westleigh Park on Sunday. Hornsby Shire Council was awarded a $40 million grant in 2018 for the Westleigh Park project.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Under the Stronger Communities fund, the former government awarded a $40 million grant in 2018 for Hornsby Shire Council’s Westleigh Park project, which is a 32-hectare parcel of land earmarked for cycling and mountain biking, walking paths, informal exercise spaces and children’s playground and picnic areas.

Since 2018, the government says there have been significant delays in the delivery of the project and limited progress has been made and that most of the grant money was yet to be spent.

The NSW government said it had no choice but to refuse a request from the council for an extension of time to use the money and Hornsby will be required to pay back all unspent funds from the original $40 million grant, estimated to be more than $36 million.

A separate request from Hornsby Council for an extension to spend a $50 million grant to turn a quarry into parkland has been approved because construction is well under way.

An artist’s impression of the finished project Westleigh Park in Hornsby. Credit:

The Office of Local Government has received 16 applications for variations from 10 councils and of these, 12 have been approved. The councils asking for extensions of time demonstrated that their projects were on track.

Three requests were refused, including Hornsby’s request for the Westleigh Park project.

The Stronger Communities grant fund plagued the previous government after it emerged $250 million was given to councils in Liberal and National-held electorates ahead of the 2019 election.

An upper house inquiry into the fund found there was no application or assessment process for the scheme, and the eligible councils were the ones who were identified by the government as being so.

A senior policy officer from former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s office also told the inquiry that she provided briefing notes to the former premier with a list of projects – one of them involving $90 million for Hornsby Shire Council – and then shredded the documents.

In a scathing audit of the fund released in 2022, then NSW auditor-general Margaret Crawford said Berejiklian had been advised in a 2018 briefing note that her staff was working to “get the cash out the door in the most politically advantageous way”.

The fund was accused of being used for blatant pork-barrelling, which Berejiklian said was not an illegal practice and one that was standard in politics.

When she gave evidence to the anti-corruption commission inquiry into her former boyfriend Daryl Maguire, Berejiklian said voters might not be comfortable with pork-barrelling, but all governments used it “from time to time”.

Berejiklian said the allocation of public money to electorates was often done to “curry favour” with voters to win elections.

“At the end of the day, whether we like it or not, that’s democracy,” she told the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig said the former Liberal-National government’s Stronger Communities fund had been exposed as “one of the most egregious examples of pork-barrelling”.

“The fund was originally established to support councils which had been forcibly merged by the former government, yet Hornsby Shire Council received $90 million despite not being one of the amalgamated councils,” Hoenig said.

“At a time when we are facing a cost-of-living crisis, every dollar counts. Hornsby Council has had years to utilise this funding and the original deadline written into the grant guidelines has long passed.”

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