After the round five projects were announced,Joyce said hedidn’t care if people called it pork-barrelling and he would not apologise for sending money to regional areas.
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The third round projects were signed off on February 26 in 2019. The federal election that year was held on May 18.
Round five projects were decided on October 6 in 2021,well ahead of this year’s May 21 poll.
The department made appropriate assessments of projects in three of the rounds,but for two others – including the October 2021 grants for which Joycefound an extra $100 million – the department gave the ministers a pool of projects to choose from.
Ministers have to report to the finance minister if they override a department’s recommendation.
The pool approach meant “for the fifth round,there would be no circumstance in which any of the 528 applications … would need to be reported to the finance minister … as an approval of an application that the department had recommended be rejected,” the audit found.
Similarly,in the third round,there were 306 “recommended” projects for the panel to choose from,collectively worth more than double the $205 million on offer.
However,the department disputed this characterisation,saying it “incorrectly used the term ‘pool’ in our briefing” and that every eligible application had been scored and ranked based on merit.
The audit found in the first round,75 per cent of infrastructure projects ranked as having the highest merit were chosen – the largest proportion for any round.
It found 65 per cent of infrastructure project stream applications approved for funding were not those assessed as being the most meritorious in the departmental assessment process. For subsequent rounds,highly scored infrastructure applications were approved at a lesser rate of between 13 and 55 per cent.
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New Infrastructure Minister Catherine King is reviewinghow grants are allocated.
“Former Coalition ministers made decisions on the basis of ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ criteria that weren’t fully explained to those applying for grants,” she said.
“Taxpayers deserve better.”
The auditor-general wants the grants guidelines strengthened and to make sure rules around providing value for money apply when politicians are heavily involved in picking winners.
Former Nationals minister Fiona Nash,who oversaw the program’s first round,said,“One of the intentions of the ministerial panel was to bring local community knowledge to the decision-making process to strengthen the robustness of funding decisions.”
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