A $560.9 million grants program that only the government's chosen applicants could enter sent 73.2 per cent of its money to notionally Labor-held electorates, according to an analysis published on Tuesday by the Centre for Public Integrity. The Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program was set up after the May 2025 election to pay for Labor's campaign promises. Forty-five of the 150 federal electorates were not invited to apply for anything.
The centre worked from a departmental list of 227 invited projects, supplied to Senate estimates in December after a request from Nationals senator Matt Canavan, and mapped each project to an electorate on the Australian Electoral Commission's notional 2025 boundaries. Of the $559.2 million in live applications, $409.1 million sat in seats Labor held, 22.6 per cent in Coalition seats and 4.3 per cent in seats held by anyone else. For every dollar spent in a Coalition electorate, the centre calculates, more than three dollars and twenty cents went to a Labor one.
The pattern sharpened inside Labor's own seats. Marginal electorates where Labor was competitive received $223.1 million, which the centre puts at $66.5 million more than a proportional share, while safe Labor seats received $12.8 million less than theirs. Sturt in Adelaide, which Labor won from the Liberals on a notional margin of 0.45 per cent, got four grants worth about $6.7 million. Braddon in Tasmania got ten grants worth $19.2 million. Tasmania has 2.3 per cent of the country's electors and received 9.1 per cent of the money; Queensland has 20.7 per cent of electors and received 9.2 per cent.
“These figures ring alarm bells," the centre's chair, Anthony Whealy KC, said. "When approximately three-quarters of a $560 million community grants program goes to the government's own electorates, serious questions have to be asked." He told the ABC's 7.30 that "prima facie, it looks like the misuse of public money or serious pork-barrelling". The centre says it is not claiming every grant lacked merit. Its complaint is that the process makes merit impossible to test.”
The Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles 2024, a legislative instrument in force since October 2024, say competitive, merit-based selection "should be used unless specifically agreed otherwise by a minister, accountable authority or delegate", and that where another method is used "the rationale for using a different approach should be documented and included in the grant opportunity guidelines". The centre says no rationale was ever published. When it asked last November who chose the invitees, the government answered that they had been "identified by government".
The only golf club invited anywhere in the country was Marrickville Golf Club in the Prime Minister's seat of Grayndler, for a $6.05 million clubhouse refurbishment Anthony Albanese announced as an election promise on 27 April 2025. The estimates list records the project as awaiting an application as of November. Rutherglen Golf Club in the Victorian seat of Indi, with asbestos-lined walls and white-ant damage, could not apply at all. "We understand not everybody can get a grant," club member Ian Grimes told 7.30. "All we want to do is be able to put our case in front of people."
Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said by statement that the program was in line with longstanding practice and the updated grants rules, that no minister decides an application in their own electorate, and that every award is published. Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino told ABC Radio National the program "is designed to deliver election commitments and that's something which is specifically set up after an election in order to allow governments to basically follow through on what they've promised to do". He said he did not know how often invitation-only schemes had been used before. The government also points to $1.7 billion in open, competitive grants through its Growing Regions and Thriving Suburbs programs.
Independent MP Helen Haines, whose electorate contains Rutherglen, said "election should not be the selection". Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May called on Albanese to appear before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, whose next hearing on the 2025 election is on 18 September. Shadow infrastructure minister Bridget McKenzie called the closed program "concerning". McKenzie resigned as sport minister in 2020 after the Auditor-General found the Coalition's $100 million Community Sport Infrastructure Program had been steered by her office using unpublished criteria, including lists of Coalition marginal and targeted seats. That audit is the precedent the centre cites. The difference this time is that the selection happened before anyone applied.
As of 2 September, 84 of the projects, worth $234.5 million, had been awarded and listed on GrantConnect. The rest are still being assessed by a department that, on McKenzie's account of estimates, had to ask the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for the list of what it was assessing.
