As a former senator, I know Australians are tired of pork-barrelling like Dutton’s special grants

Over the past 20 years, Australians have become increasingly sceptical about the extravagant promises made in pre-electioneering, when special grants target “marginal” electorates — aka pork-barrelling — and favoured policy options demand funding way beyond the three-year election cycle. 

Today we’ve seen Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledge money to local safety programs in key electorates such as Kooyong in Melbourne and his seat Dickson in Queensland. Meanwhile Labor has pledged $10 billion for 50 new urgent care clinics (currently untested as an investment) in primarily Labor seats, which the Coalition has decried as pork-barrelling.

Many voters will agree there is an urgent need to restrict the unfair cost of vote-buying in marginal electorates, with the major parties trying to outdo each other by appealing to voters with promises that will impact future budgets. Funding of essential government services should be based on sound research and professional expertise, not the postcode of selected voters.

As a former Labor senator and backroom strategist, I was schooled in the politics of “winners and losers” — when governments won elections and oppositions were relegated to obscurity. It was a simple narrative for a young woman elected to the Senate in 1983: just learn the political games of mostly male colleagues, always support the Australian Labor Party, and remember your opponents are always the enemy!

Acceptance of such advice did not always prevail in politics 40 years ago — or when I cast my first national vote in the 1960s — but it is certainly outdated in modern Australia, a time when voters want new ways to achieve participatory democracy that recognise the need for consultation and reform.

Reliance on a mainly two-party system dominated my parliamentary experience of preparing for national elections when there was little opportunity for independent thought or strategy at the local level. As a senator, my primary role at the state and national level was to support colleagues who held “marginal” electorates — where the percentage of votes was less than 5% — with new candidates also assisted to win seats considered “winnable” from the opposition. The “central campaign committee” made these decisions in advance, and it was almost impossible to persuade anyone to deviate from this predetermined strategy.

As a North Queenslander, I was expected to offer resources and visit various marginal seats to support the key election messages chosen in Canberra or Sydney. On occasions, it was frustrating to be expected to repeat national advocacy that did not necessarily resonate in remote regions, so I can now confess to localising certain issues. 

In 1983, for example, I successfully campaigned on a platform of “North Queensland: A Special Place”, complete with colourful posters, pamphlets and promises to fund local infrastructure. The strategy aimed to win four regional seats based on Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton. Although this helped secure three of these regional electorates, that approach was discontinued because national election campaigning became the focus of Australian political parties. 

I would justify this not as pork-barrelling but rather as overdue recognition of a regional area long neglected by successive political parties and their government. Certainly there will always be a need to recognise some electorates over others at particular times when natural disasters or the closure of major industry has disproportionately impacted a given area, creating loss of infrastructure and/or job opportunities. However, such decision-making in the lead-up to an election needs to be transparent and accompanied with detailed assessments of the proposed initiative so that allegations of vote-buying can be readily dismissed.

In 1993, I had some difficulty convincing Labor strategists that the party’s childcare policy should be a highlighted feature of campaigning. I knew that then prime minister Paul Keating visiting childcare centres on the campaign trail would be popular, add a fresh narrative that appealed to women, and contribute to a successful election outcome that year.

I can understand that my enthusiasm for this approach could have been seen as a cynical attempt to use young children to influence voters. However, in that era, government-funded childcare was neither well-known nor understood as an essential part of the economy, enabling both parents to work, so again I would differentiate it from blatant pork-barrelling.

I don’t claim special exemption from scrutiny of past pre-election practices, but it is of concern that the breadth and scale of more recent examples of “vote-buying” appear to demand more accountability. Now that I’m retired, I join the ranks of many Australians as an armchair critic wondering how we can achieve a more visionary Parliament that better reflects the aspirations of modern Australia. We need a diversity of parliamentarians who accept they too must contribute to policy-making in the best interests of all.

Voters today are better educated and more aware of the importance of integrity in politics, so they demand higher standards from their elected representatives. Information availability and rapid communications greatly enhance the capacity of the community to be fully informed about detailed policy decisions.

For example, amendments to the Electoral Reform Bill late in 2024 were almost immediately recognised as collusion between Labor and the Coalition to introduce new electoral expenditure “reforms” that favour larger established parties. While this legislation does not come into effect in time for the 2025 federal election, the merits of these changes will nevertheless be hotly debated as smaller parties and independents try to guarantee their place in the next Parliament and possibly minority government.

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