The Morrison Government has been accused of ‘hiding’ information over the $660 million commuter car park fund, which Labor argues was “wholesale rorting”.
Set up in 2018 as part of the Urban Congestion Fund, the project was intended to construct car parks near urban railway stations. However, the Auditor-General found that none of the 47 car park projects to receive money under the fund were selected by the Infrastructure department, that 90% of the projects were in government-held or targeted seats, and that just five of the 47 car parks have been delivered.
From 9News:
The Senate has passed a motion requiring the government to table spreadsheets shared between the Prime Minister’s office and the then-Minister for Infrastructure Alan Tudge, including emails or documents setting out the list of “top twenty marginals”, and “any spreadsheet created… for the purpose of setting out the proposed UCF projects”.
Instead, the government re-released two letters from Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher, arguing documents had not been seen and could not be found, and there was a public interest immunity claim preventing their release.
“No wonder they don’t want to abide by orders of the Senate to produce documents, this Prime Minister doesn’t like answering questions because he knows the Australian people won’t like the answers,” Labor Senator Kristina Keneally told the Senate.
“If the documents requested by the Senate today could make the government look good we would have seen them by now, so what are they hiding? What are they hiding?”…
Parliamentary hearings have heard claims a list of marginals was drawn up to use in discussions…
The government had already refused a Senate request to release documents.
It has also indicated its refusal to release them through Freedom of Information.
The next chart below, compiled by The VOG Files, shows the heavy spread of funding to Coalition electorates:
The below charts show similar bias among other grant schemes:
Building Better Regions Fund:
Sports Rorts:
In total, there are eleven charts on the The VOG Files page showing similar funding bias.
The above is clear evidence of why a proper anti-corruption commission is required at the federal level. Corruption runs deep right across Australia’s political system.
