Coalition targeted ‘top 20 marginal seats’ in $660m car park projects

The Morrison government’s $660m Commuter Car Park Projects fund began with a list of the country’s top 20 marginal seat, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

ANAO executive director Brian Boyd. Picture: AAP

The Morrison government’s $660m Commuter Car Park Projects fund began with a list of the country’s top 20 marginal seats and MPs were invited to pick “what they’d like to see” in their electorate, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

The spillover estimates hearing on Monday heard the genesis of the fund began in September 2018, before the Morrison government had decided to invest in commuter car parks, with a panel of senior ministers “canvassing” their colleagues in marginal seats as part of the then nascent $4.8bn Urban Congestion Fund.

In June, the Auditor-General delivered a scathing report over the Morrison government’s administration of the car parks fund, finding 87 per cent of the funded projects were in targeted or ­Coalition-held seats and none of the 47 car park projects was chosen by the department.

Australian National Audit Office executive director Brian Boyd told the hearing two ministerial offices were involved in the creation of the tracking sheet of marginal seats – the Prime Minister’s Office and the office of then-urban infrastructure minister Alan Tudge.

“And the key thing was from within minister Tudge’s office – one of the key tasks to be done was to actually canvass what was initially called the top 20 marginals as to what they’d like to see funded through the Urban Congestion Fund,”

At least 20 of the 47 car park projects were approved by Scott Morrison the day before he called the federal election in 201.

Mr Boyd added that the selection criteria weren’t confined strictly to the car park projects, but also the parent program.

“The canvassing was never just the car parks. The canvassing was the broader UCF, of which the car parks were just a component,” he said. “It was very much that approach of starting with the electorate, rather than ‘here is where congestion is the greatest’.”

The alleged misappropriation of the fund saw one car park proposed in a suburb where there was no train station, and multiple projects eventually ditched by the Morrison government.

Josh Frydenberg’s office, rather than the department proposed four projects including estimated costs for each.

As revealed by The Australian, the federal government’s failure to appropriately undertake assessments has seen some project costs blow out by more than 500 per cent, costing the taxpayer at least $70m.

By December 2018, Mr Boyd said the Morrison government had a map of Australia prepared by the department (of Infrastructure) to “inform the discussions between ministers”, which was “splitting up the dollars” of the UCF by electorate. Members of the department denied having ever seen such a document but did, confirm that only nine of the 155 projects in the UCF had been recommended by the department.

Mr Boyd added the same staffer in the PMO behind the Community Sports Infrastructure Grant was also involved in the canvassing for the UCF.