Community infrastructure funding should be allocated according to need and merit, not electoral advantage. The latest Senate inquiry shows why Australia needs a cleaner system.

The stench of the Albanese government’s politicisation of community development grants, as exposed by the Centre for Public Integrity, is not going away.

Why would it when the federal government essentially refuses to be properly accountable for why it gave $493 million of a grants fund of $560 million to relatively safe and marginal ALP electorates and neglected others? There was no open competition – the grants given were by invitation only.

Now the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee is inquiring into the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program (MLCIP) under which these so-called ’election commitments’ were laundered. The committee has snagged several interesting submissions.

While noting it is responsible for administering the MLCIP, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts, whose minister, Catherine King, made the decisions about last year’s grants, says in its submission that it “…had no role in identifying, selecting or recommending projects or applicants invited to apply under the program…at any point and the government did not seek any such advice from the department.”

Well, of course it didn’t, because........

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