Tom Minear: Liberal’s car park pledge is shameless pork-barrelling

The Morrison government’s $660m commuter parking fund has long been a slow-motion car crash since and now we can see it for what it truly is: pork-barrelling.

The Morrison government’s $660m commuter parking fund has been a slow-motion car crash since before it was even announced in the lead-up to the 2019 election.

Treasury boffins pulling the nation’s purse strings wanted a competitive process to pick projects that would cut the most congestion at the least cost.

Under Alan Tudge, the urban infrastructure minister, the government did the opposite. MPs put forward railway stations where they thought parking was needed. No one spoke to the councils or state governments required to deliver them.

The Infrastructure Department told Tudge it had no information on station parking and provided advice on sites that ignored “project feasibility, costs, risks or value for money”.

Instead of this ringing alarm bells, the government proudly announced 47 stations to receive new parking. Of those, 30 were in Melbourne, including 25 in Liberal-held seats and none in the growing western suburbs.

A scathing Auditor-General’s report, released this week, was too focused on this shambolic process to answer the critical question: why? According to those involved, there is a simple explanation. The program was an easy way to curry favour with voters in seats the government wanted to protect. Shameless pork-barrelling.

The Morrison government’s election promise to build car parks at suburban train stations is in tatters.

Is this wrong? Labor thinks so, describing it as “industrial-scale rorting”. Anyone who reads the report will see taxpayers have indeed been taken for a ride. But the question of whether this is wrong, per se, is not as clear-cut as it seems.

Consider the Andrews government’s Suburban Rail Loop. Announced before the 2018 state election, it was incredibly popular with voters, especially in the eastern suburbs where Labor was trying to win seats and where the first loop section was planned. What a coincidence.

Daniel Andrews didn’t put a price tag on the project. Might be $50bn, might be more. Nearly three years on, we still don’t know, nor do we have a business case.

Victoria’s Transport Department hadn’t even heard of the Suburban Rail Loop until moments before the Premier announced it on Facebook. It was drawn up in secret by Development Victoria and approved over other long-planned projects such as the second Metro Tunnel. And it’s not even a loop. If it’s ever finished, it will instead be a series of disjointed rail lines.

Is this wrong? The government clearly hasn’t demonstrated the kind of rigour and transparency that should accompany the most expensive project the state has ever seen.

The issue at the heart of this question, however, is what we expect of our politicians. They are elected to lead, not to be led by public servants. One minister explained this week that while they carefully followed departmental advice on implementing policy, they were more likely to ignore it when creating policy.

“You never get in trouble for making bad decisions providing the process is right, and that’s really perverse. It should be judged on outcomes,” the minister said.

“Why have elections if we have this view that departmental officials are the final arbiters?”

Daniel Andrews has put a price tag on the Suburban Rail Loop.

Last month, Community Safety Minister Jason Wood was accused by Labor of “rorting” the Safer Communities Fund.

His department recommended 80 applications for support. Wood approved them all but trimmed their funding by 10 per cent to back extra projects the department deemed unsuitable or ineligible, mostly security upgrades of temples and churches that experienced vandalism, theft, trespassing and abuse.

Opposition spokesman Pat Conroy accused the government of treating “taxpayers’ money like it’s their money to be used for political gain”. In fact, Wood did exactly what he was supposed to do under federal grant rules. He investigated why the projects needed funding and recorded his reasons for approving them.

Some in Labor were decidedly uncomfortable with their party’s effort to turn the matter into a scandal. They didn’t see a rort, but a minister appropriately exercising his discretion.

ThroughouT the pandemic, following the health advice has been the mantra of state and federal leaders. This has saved thousands of lives and served the country well. But as we continue trying to navigate life with Covid-19, this adherence to the views of unelected bureaucrats — experts as they are — places both politicians and their constituents in a bind.

Health chiefs want to preserve the (mostly) Covid-free lifestyle they have created.

While their motive is pure, their advice is blind to the effect of the restrictions they propose. It is to our detriment that politicians are not more willing to challenge these recommendations and make decisions based on a universal view of risks and rewards.

Of course, governments cannot function without good advice. The end result of the car park fund — projects that are over-budget, running late or impossible to build — is evidence of that.

If Scott Morrison wants to build station parking, it is incumbent upon him to work with his experts — who must determine whether that is an effective use of public money — and then explain his rationale to voters. The same goes for Andrews and his rail loop.

At least the leaders are listening to the Covid-19 advice.

But they also need to be interrogating, reviewing and balancing those recommendations against their broader priorities and responsibilities. It’s a democracy, not a bureaucracy.

Tom Minear is Herald Sun national politics editor