The Morrison government has rolled out the pork-barrels in its reelection strategy today, announcing what it claims is an $18 billion increase in infrastructure funding across dozens of projects around the country.
However, only a handful, worth around $3.3 billion, or less than one-fifth of the announced sum, are projects identified on Infrastructure Australia’s priority list, or previous versions of the list.
The billion-dollar upgrade to the Newcastle-Sydney rail line, the $1.1 billion Brisbane-Gold Coast rail upgrade and the $264 million Newell Highway upgrade in NSW are the biggest of the 11 announced projects that have made it on to IA’s list, along with a number of smaller projects, although none rank as an “investment-ready proposal”, according to IA’s criteria.
The package was unveiled early this morning after being carefully dropped to selected journalists yesterday in order to give it some clear air ahead of the budget, which is likely to contain an array of spending and tax measures designed to win back desperately needed voter support with the election to be called as early as the weekend.
Most of the funding announced for Victoria is targeted at intermodal freight road and rail projects — more than $3 billion — with only limited investment in commuter road or rail projects, whereas in Queensland the spending is almost entirely directed at Brisbane mass transit projects, along with a bizarre $22 million for “business case development” in relation to the 2032 Olympics — which seems a bit late given the city is already stuck with the games.
In NSW $1.3 billion is being targeted at the Sydney-Newcastle corridor and particularly the Wyong area. The two relevant seats there are Robertson, held by Liberal MP Lucy Wicks with just a 4.2% margin, and Dobell, which Labor holds by just 1.5%. Woy Woy will also receive extra funding from the government’s heavily rorted car park fund, along with increases in funds from the discredited program in other centres in NSW and Victoria, according to media reports.
The pork-barrelling continues the tradition of heavily politicised infrastructure allocation, with both major parties developing spending programs for political purposes unrelated to infrastructure priorities — exactly the opposite of IA’s recommendation about the benefits of greater transparency in infrastructure decisions.
It also comes at a point when the heavy construction industry is at capacity — something completely ignored in the federal government’s hyping of its announcements, including its claim that its investment would “support tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across Australia”. In fact the NSW government has just revealed it has decided to delay major metropolitan road projects due to soaring costs and skill shortages.
The lack of long-term planning around timing as well as poor business case development have been a significant factor in the now-routine blowouts in the cost of major infrastructure projects.
Liberal MP John Alexander, possessed of that spirit of honesty that only appears when politicians end their careers, called last week for infrastructure spending allocation to be taken out of the hands of politicians and handed to an independent body, the equivalent of a central bank for infrastructure.
This would provide the basis not just for better assessment of the merits of projects but would encourage an ongoing pipeline of projects rather than the lumpy process that currently applies, where governments bid against each other and themselves for scarce skills.
But it would deprive governments of both persuasions of pre-budget announcements designed to shore up their electoral prospects and maybe snatch desperately needed seats from their opponents.
Morrison’s coalition government learned in the last election that it can do whatever it likes, and fail to do whatever it can’t be bothered to do, and still win.
Angus Taylor, Gladys Berejiklian, Barnaby Joyce, Bridget MacKenzie and Simon Birmingham learned that blatant pork rorting is unlikely to derail a successful career for long.
Until these people lose, their behaviour is rational.
Until the majority of voters elect candidates who will serve the country according to the principles on which the system is based, the system is dysfuntional, and pork is the new system.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has defended Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton against accusations of pork-barrelling, as the cabinet minister says his changes gave the Commonwealth more bang for its buck.
Mr Dutton handpicked 53 projects to share in $8.5 million for security cameras and safety lighting in the months before the last federal election, only five of which were in safe Labor seats.
SMH 12/2/21
$1 billion for a “fast rail” Newcastle to Sydney as compared to the ALP $5billion very fast rail
As usual LNP promises only good for an election period and are not truly nation building.
Look at the NBN – after all the crowing about the ALP NBN cost – the LNP Govt spent $51 billion to deliver a copper system (Turnbull, for one, (how many other Libs?) had/has shares in the company that supplied the copper) and are now spending further billions to make the system optic fibre
Morrison and his gang have no idea what nation building actually means – it is NOT wasting $45billion on poor decisions for military/defence procurement
Their fast train is simply an upgrade of some sections of the Sydney/Newcastle line!
I believe that the old Newcastle Flier ( 3801) still holds the record for this run
3801 does indeed still hold the record.
Still 14 hours Brisbane to Sydney. We don’t need a very fast train, just a faster train! Even 150kmh would more than halve the time and entice many more people to decentralise.
Committing vast resources to enable people to commute greater distances more quickly is NOT decentralisation – it is merely more pollution, more waste and more stupidity.
You don’t think we need decentralising?
More than any other major change to our current mad demographic pattern – see posts passim on 84M Germans in an area smaller than NSW having fewer cities over 1M than this country. France even more so.
To enable commuters to waste even more of their lives travelling ever greater differences to the same CBD is the antithesis of decentralisation.
Germany and France have somewhat higher average rainfall and more arable soil than NSW, so they’re hardly straight comparisons.
And much nastier winters.
News flash – water pipes have just been invented.
I agree but at very least we need policies that won’t diminish currently working regional centres. Lismore used to be a vibrant city. Starting some 30 years ago successive govts centralised virtually all their services to Sydney plus cancelled the railway link. It is now a dying city, the recent floods could be the death knell as neither state or fed govts seem interested to come to its aid. In spite of a looming election, even labor has been MIA. Just weird…
Barnyard moved a federal dept. to Armidale by fiat.
Whitlam failed when he tried to bribe civil servants to move to Bathurst/Orange or Albury/Wodonga development areas.
Subsidies never work – why not try imposing the true costs of feeding & watering the great coastal Wens on the featherbedded recusants whining about $7 coffees and clogged commuter routes?
The national maritime emergency response centre is in the seaside town of Canberra – which toytown also has more than half of all Customs officers because of its huge international airport.
A VFT at 350kph would enable airport congestion to be greatly reduced (and consequent Airport expansion) if such a track were constructed along the eastern seaboard.
Sure but then we’d be up for god knows how many billions and frankly we don’t have the population density to justify it.
Initial capital costs would be outrageous but then you need to think of the environmental and other benefits as well as the transport itself. If we can waste B$51 on Sub design…..
The train will of course have to be coal fired.
Only after all the trees felled en route have been used.
BTW, apart from tourist routes such the the Zig-Zag, are there any puffin’ billies in daily use?
Until the abolition of the Nehruvian All India development model in the 80s, India was still able to make them – perhaps there are a few old engineers left willing to emigrate and teach us how?
The majority of India rail technical staff were Anglo-Indian, left behind as the tide of Empire ebbed.
Fried and Birmingham are a couple of total hacks. Pork barrellers, sure, but intelligent money managers – at the bottom of the list! Their objective is always feathering LNP nest – not what’s good for the people or been recommended by qualified experts.
These projects are mostly bullsh*t announcements with little prospect of anything tangible emerging. And as Bernard points out, the capacity of the construction industry simply cannot deliver these over-hyped ‘projects’.
The real story here, and ignored by, or not apparent to, the media is that post election an avalanche of head contractor insolvencies in the construction industry will occur. Probuild is just the curtain raiser.
Why? Because the ATO is not vigorously pursuing tax debts. I wonder why that may be, Josh from Accounts.
No contractor is making money and most have numerous massive loss-makers on their books with programs up to a year behind. This is caused by a toxic combination of pandemic effects: appalling productivity, supply lead times multiples of what they were in late 2019, straight out unavailability of key materials, all of which have increased in price massively (in some case +70%) since December 2019.
If smug market economists can explain to me that a financial catastrophe is not imminent in the construction industry, I really want to hear why I am wrong. I hope I am wrong. But I have been involved in the business for 50 years and I have never seen conditions so dire. Subbies, most of whom are wielding market power and currently making good money in these circumstances, are all facing a massive hole in debts not paid in the 2nd half of this year when the ATO starts addressing tax collection shortfalls after the election.
This is a time bomb deliberately created by the mist corrupt and incompetent federal government in history. The bomb will go off in Labor’s hands. And in the, hopefully, unlikely event of the muppets winning, they will have 3 years to bullish*t their way out of the odium.
I have suggested Crikey look into it. But nothing much yet.
“…possessed of that spirit of honesty that only appears when politicians end their careers…”.
What a depressing, but true, observation.