“I am very proud of what I did. As a minister, I stand by the decisions I made. They were based on merit, but in line with the guidelines.
“It’s not a pork barrel. It’s making sure that the regions… we send a lot of tax receipts to Canberra… making sure they get their fair share. It’s not a decision made by a faceless, pointy-shoe bureaucrat who will never have his name on a ballot.”
Center for Public Integrity research director Catherine Williams said ministers should set the parameters of a spending program but decisions should be made independently by the public service.
“This is public money that is not infinite, so there is always a public interest in ensuring that it is used in the best and most efficient way,” he said. “The use of this money must be done in a transparent and responsible manner.”
The Department for Infrastructure told the auditor-general it had changed its focus on the two rounds of pre-election grants to give ministers more discretion over which projects received money.
The auditor-general also found that ministerial staff drew up shortlists of projects based on their distribution among constituents and whether the local MP supported them.
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For the third round, which McCormack oversaw, that list began more than three weeks before Infrastructure offered its written funding recommendations. Shortlisted projects were more likely to be approved than those recommended by the department.
While staff were drafting the shortlist, the department hand-delivered a USB with preliminary project advice to McCormack’s office 12 days before his formal written briefing. He did not keep a record of what was on the USB, but this included an advance copy of the merit rankings and a summary of “sensitive projects”.
The ministerial panel did not meet during this third round and the auditor-general said there was no evidence on the record of panel members other than McCormack being involved.
In this round, 87% of the 166 approved infrastructure projects had not been recommended for funding, the highest proportion of any round. In the fifth round, announced in October 2021, 75% of approved projects were not recommended by the department.
Infrastructure Minister Catherine King indicated on Friday that a sixth round of the scheme, which was being assessed when the election was called, could be cancelled.
“I haven’t made a decision … but it’s fair to say that when you get a report from the audit office condemning this fund, it’s pretty hard to see that the fund isn’t corrupt in some way,” he said. .
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