’Desperate cash splash’: Tasmanian council did not apply for grant awarded by Dutton
Announcement of $134,000 for CCTV cameras before Braddon byelection raises issues of ‘due process’
Christopher Knaus
Peter Dutton will award $134,000 to the Waratah-Wynyard council through the federal government’s Safer Communities Fund. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
A Tasmanian council that has been promised a $134,000 federal grant for CCTV cameras had not even applied for the money, prompting allegations of pork-barrelling before next week’s Braddon byelection.
The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, announced this week he would award the money to the Waratah-Wynyard council through the federal government’s Safer Communities Fund, a grants scheme designed to “address crime and anti-social behaviour”.
The grants scheme requires councils and other groups to make a formal application for funds, which is then assessed and scored against merit criteria.
Applicants are typically required to demonstrate the extent to which the proposed project would improve community safety, how much it would benefit from grant funding, and their “capacity, capability, and resources” to deliver the project.
Waratah-Wynyard council has never made a formal application for the grant. It is understood the council had planned to apply for the next round of funding in the grants scheme, but will no longer need to.
“Council did not make a formal application for this funding,” a spokesman said.
Dutton also promised $60,000 for CCTV cameras to Burnie City council, also in the Braddon electorate.
That council would not confirm whether it had made a formal application for funds.
“Council is continually seeking funding to expand CCTV coverage in the Burnie CBD,” a spokeswoman said. “In the case of this announcement please refer your questions to the relevant Commonwealth department.”
Braddon is one of five electorates going to the polls next Saturday.
There is no suggestion that the councils did anything wrong in accepting the promised money. Both had been interested in applying for the grants scheme, or its precursor, at various points.
A 2015 audit into the last CCTV grants scheme, the Safer Streets program, was damning of the way the government announced the awarding of grants before they had been assessed on their merits by the department.
The auditor-general found the early announcements risked improperly influencing the department’s considerations of whether the grant was merited.
“Against this background, there is a risk that early announcements by ministers and/or other parliamentarians about whether project proposals will receive funding has the potential to influence, or be seen to influence, the assessment work and subsequent advice as to whether funding should be approved,” the audit found.
It found the first round of grants had disproportionately been promised to councils in Coalition seats. Only one of the promised grants was later found to be unsuitable by the department. It also found “the merit assessment process … was handled particularly poorly by the department” and criticised a lack of transparency over the selection criteria.
Robert Carr, a University of Western Sydney research fellow, has researched the use of CCTV grants under the Safer Streets program.
He said the early announcement of the grants in Braddon clearly raised issues of “due process”.
Describing it as pork-barrelling would depend on whether the grants were used as a transaction intended to achieve a political outcome, he said.
“If Peter Dutton has promised funding, or has given funding, on the basis that in his belief that a political benefit will be achieved, then it is pork-barrelling,” Carr told Guardian Australia.
“The evidence of this was clear during the Safer Streets funding first round when politicians were directly telling voters they had to vote for the Coalition in order to get the funding.”
Carr said there would be an exception if Dutton had some special power to hand out the money outside the normal grants process.
Otherwise, he said, “I can’t see how this wouldn’t be pork-barrelling if a political outcome was the goal.”
Neither the home affairs minister’s office, his assistant minister, Alex Hawke, nor the attorney-general’s department would explain why the money was promised before the council had applied through the normal grant process. The attorney general’s department said questions were best directed to Hawke. Hawke’s office did not respond to questions.
Labor’s candidate for Braddon, Justine Keay, criticised Dutton’s announcement as a “desperate cash splash” before the byelection.
“This just shows that Peter Dutton’s visit to Braddon was nothing more than a desperate cash splash,” she said. “No amount of CCTV cameras will make up for the fact that the Liberals have gutted TAFE in Braddon, cut 700 apprentices and cut $1m from the north-west regional hospital.”
The Greens justice spokesman, Nick McKim, went further: “This is blatant pork barrelling from the Liberal party and it shows they have nothing to offer the people of Tasmania except fear and division,” he said.
“The people of Braddon would be far better off if Dutton had announced extra investment into social housing, or raising Newstart.”
