Labour's $560 million grants scheme sent three dollars to safe seats for every dollar sent to the Coalition copertina

Labour's $560 million grants scheme sent three dollars to safe seats for every dollar sent to the Coalition

Labour's $560 million grants scheme sent three dollars to safe seats for every dollar sent to the Coalition

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An independent investigation into a closed-door federal infrastructure fund found no link between where the money went and where it was needed, only between where it went and who was likely to win the seat.For every dollar the federal government spent in a Coalition-held seat through its $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Programme, it spent three dollars twenty in a seat notionally held by Labour.That is the headline finding of an independent Centre for Public Integrity investigation published this week. It sits at the centre of a growing row over how the Albanese government decided who got a slice of the country’s largest single-purpose community grants fund.The MLCI programme was set up to deliver on more than half a billion dollars in election commitments: sports facilities, parks, and community centres. Unlike most federal grant schemes, it ran on an invitation-only basis.The government selected roughly 220 projects and invited them to apply. There was no open or competitive process, and electorates left off the list had no way to be considered.The Centre for Public Integrity’s analysis, reported by the ABC’s Jake Evans for 7.30, found 73 per cent of the funding went to seats notionally held by Labour at the 2025 election, 23 per cent to Coalition-held seats and 4 per cent to everyone else.Breaking the labour-seat total down further: about $220 million went to marginal seats. Labour was actively contesting, and about $270 million went to seats it already held safely. Just $66 million was promised across every seat where Labour wasn’t competitive.The centre also tested whether the pattern could be explained by genuine need rather than politics. It compared funding against household income data and found no relationship. In fact, the poorest electorates in the country received a below-average share of grants.It found no link either to a measure of “community connectedness”, a proxy for how much infrastructure a place actually lacks. Forty-five electorates received no invitation and no funding at all.“Prima facie, it looks like the misuse of public money or serious pork-barrelling, as it’s sometimes called,” the centre’s chair, former justice Anthony Whealy, told 7.30. Executive director Catherine Williams summarised the imbalance in blunter terms: “for every dollar spent in a Coalition seat, $3.20 was spent in a notionally ALP-held seat.”Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.The golf club in the Prime Minister’s seatThe single detail driving the most attention is a $6 million grant to Marrickville Golf Club, the only golf club invited into the entire program and located in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler. The grant covers clubhouse refurbishment, an accessibility ramp and septic system repairs.ABC News revealed this week that Albanese has held an honorary membership at the club since around 2012, by his own account to parliament, and that it was never declared on his register of interests.He has said he holds no member card, has not visited the clubhouse in years, and was not personally involved in the decision to fund it. Those claims have not been disputed by any reporting to date. What is not in dispute is that the membership existed undeclared and that his own electorate’s golf club was the sole one funded nationally.Asked about it in Question Time, Albanese defended the grant on its merits and framed the scrutiny as an ordinary part of representing an electorate well: “If you’re a good local member, a whole lot of people will give you honorary membership of things. If you’re a good local member who stands up for your electorate, that will occur.”That framing sits uneasily next to the experience of Indi, the north-east Victorian seat held by independent MP Helen Haines, one of the 45 electorates that received nothing under MLCI.A local club in her electorate, Rutherglen Golf Club, nearly a century old and in need of repairs to asbestos-affected walls, white-ant damage and a sloping floor, asked Haines how to apply for MLCI funding. She had no answer, because there was no invitation to be had.“I was shocked by the scale of this, by the depth of this,” Haines told 7.30. Club member Ian Grimes put it more simply: “It just feels unfair and frustrating. We’re not asking for special treatment.”The government’s defenceInfrastructure Minister Catherine King has defended the programme as consistent with longstanding grant guidelines: ministers do not decide on applications inside their own electorate (a different cabinet colleague does), and every grant awarded is published on AusTender.She has also pointed to $1.7 billion made available separately through open, competitive schemes, Growing Regions and Thriving Suburbs.None of that addresses how the original 220 projects were chosen for invitation in ...
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