by PAUL COLLITS – IF THE appalling behaviour of Australian governments during the COVID non-pandemic taught us anything, it is that executive overreach is the number one political problem in this country.
An issue, alas, simply not addressed during the recent election campaign.
- Pork-barrelling is a bastardisation of representative democracy.
- Berejiklian’s then Deputy Premier revelled in the nick name “Pork Barellaro”.
- The parliamentary process is now one giant auction.
It is therefore highly reassuring to see at least one agency (the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption) doing something about one of the State’s chief weapons of overreach.
I speak of pork-barrelling, the use of the public purse to favour specific geographical locations (electorates) to curry political favour with voters.
UNLAWFUL
Or as Anne Twomey defines it: “Pork-barrelling involves the exercise of public powers, such as the making of grants or commitments to build infrastructure, in a biased or ‘partial’ manner that favours the interests of a political Party, rather than in the public interest. Politicians on all sides engage in such behaviour, asserting that it is not unlawful and that it is ‘just politics’.”
If only ICAC or some similar body would turn its attention to some of the other tools of overreach employed by our governing class, like crony capitalism, generally described euphemistically as “public-private-partnerships”, the outsourcing of core government functions to inept, bureaucratic, often foreign-owned corporations who simply wreck the whole sector into which they have been thrust, the unfettered power of lobbyists, not to mention the whole sorry saga of privatisation (to which I will return), and, of course, big government itself.
ICAC probably got especially interested in NSW pork-barrelling, not only because senior members of the NSW government were caught doing it in decidedly shady ways, but also because they were bragging about it!
The unlamented former premier, who perhaps might best be remembered as the minister for getting goodies for the marginal electorate of the bloke with whom she was shacked up, tried the lines, “they all do it” and “it is all part of politics”.
Gladys opined in late 2020: “NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has accepted the government’s controversial $250m council grants program may have shored up Coalition votes, insisting the practice of pork-barrelling was ‘not illegal’.
“Ms Berejiklian said grants handed out through the program went to 95 per cent Coalition-held seats, because, she said, ‘Guess what? There are more Coalition seats than any other’.”
Well, actually there are not more Coalition seats than others, certainly not now (and certainly never in the ratio of 95 per cent Coalition seats to five per cent other). The NSW Government is a minority government.
More significantly, her dubious claim about legality seems not to be shared by ICAC: Independent Commission Against Corruption chief commissioner Peter Hall said the $250m Stronger Communities fund had clearly crossed “the line”, while another legal expert said the process was an “appalling” indictment on the integrity of the NSW government.
Berejiklian’s Deputy Premier even revelled in the nick name “Pork Barellaro”. This accidental political truth-telling may well have miffed those in government and near to it who actually retain a vestigial regard for good governance, ministerial responsibility, the prudent disbursement of taxpayer funds and old-fashioned public service.
The brazen justification of corrupt practices by senior NSW politicians demonstrates the extent to which pork barrelling is embedded in the system. It is baked in.
By “embedded”, I do not just mean widespread. I mean systemic.
AUCTION
We have reached the point where members of parliament and, sadly, many of their voters as well, see their role as getting “stuff” for their electorates, and the parliamentary process as one giant auction.
This, I have termed elsewhere, is “the tyranny of the announceable”.
The former NSW premier, Neville Wran, not for nothing regarded as the most successful and most feared politician in our short history, once said, “if something is worth announcing, it is worth announcing seven times”.
Well, just before the 2019 State election, out of curiosity, I looked up the press releases of the then Member for Lismore over a period of a year.
Every single one of his media releases was the announcement of grant funding for his electorate. Every single one.
I suppose he regarded himself as highly successful as a result of his endeavours.
This announcement effect of public spending that is part of the cargo cultism of the modern polity is one contributing factor to the fiscal incontinence that is also now par for the course.
COVID had politicians like ScoMo (remember him?) salivating at the prospect of “saving” the economy through political bribes, in his case not just of electorates but of workers and employers.
TRILLION
More waste duly ensued. Now the nation’s debt sits at around one trillion dollars.
Pork-barrelling is a bastardisation of representative democracy, and sadly, simply getting rid of such practices at the overtly corrupt end of the spectrum may well leave the rest of the system relatively untouched.
It isn’t just the political advantages thought to be gained by the politicians engaging in it that is the system-wide problem. It is changing the whole process and the purpose of government that should worry every thinking Australian.
Of course, whatever they might say, all politicians always oppose with all the vigour they can muster any suggestion of winding back their power to curry favour with voters in this way.
IMPORTANT
The British political philosopher and politician of the late eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, had important and relevant things to say about the nature of representative democracy and the role of the member of parliament:
“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.
Burke’s admirable thesis on the role of the parliamentary member has been well and truly superseded in this venal age, much to our cost. One Burke scholar has noted: “Burke was the great eighteenth-century theorist of parliamentarism. He also struggled with the great challenge of parliamentarism – ministers holding power through the corrupt use of patronage – and it was in response to this challenge that he offered his famous theory of political Parties.”
I wonder what Burke would make of current practices in NSW. “Bastardised” isn’t the word.PC
