It's an odd time for Labor to play politics as usual with federal grants

Standing inside the "Royal Marrickville" clubhouse, Anthony Albanese joked in front of a group of a few dozen supporters and some local media about his association with the club.

"I've got a couple of things I need to put on the record so that … people who oppose the club can put it online: I declare an interest," Albanese said to members in a video recorded back in 2019 by his one-time golf coach.

"I've been coming here for decades and using this club."

Before that video cuts off, the member for Grayndler begins another "confession": that despite his coach's best efforts, he hasn't become much of a golfer.

When the prime minister promised $6 million to the Marrickville Golf Club during the 2025 election campaign, it wasn't because someone at the club was slipping him a $20 note every fortnight.

And Albanese is not using his honorary membership, given 15 years ago and not declared, to skip the club's $1,100 annual fee to hit the links every weekend — the PM's preference for tennis is well known.

But his golf club was the only golf club on a list of 220 projects given public money — a place that he lived around the corner from and frequented, that hosted Labor candidate launches he joined, and to which he had promised money at least twice before — and, by his own words, had an "interest" in.

When there is such a clear relationship, and when Labor hand-picked the projects that got money from its "invitation only" program, it is hard for the public to believe other worthy projects in seats not of interest to Labor are getting a fair go.

As old as Ancient Greece

The Centre for Public Integrity's conclusion from its examination of that $560 million grant scheme under which the Marrickville Golf Club was funded was inescapable: three quarters of the money went to Labor-held seats, or close to 90 per cent of the whole program to safe Labor seats and marginals where the party was competitive.

The defence being mounted by Labor, apparently, is that it is fine for that $560 million to favour the party, because everybody does it sometimes.

"In elections, members of parliament, candidates running for election make promises. If you win, if you form government, then you fund those promises, and that's what this is," frontbencher Jason Clare said this week.

"I think this is probably as old as Ancient Greece. You know, all politics is local."

It's the fact that this is same-old politics that this matters.

A tradition as old as Ancient Greece of spending public money on partisan interests is being rejected by voters.

There are half a dozen independent MPs who rode into parliament on a wave of desire for politics to be done differently, including on integrity issues like pork-barrelling.

There is a belief inside the major parties that independents are simply unhappy that there isn't enough room at the trough to stick their noses in, too, given they don't want grants abolished — just opened up to everyone.

And there is an argument that decisions should be made by MPs who are accountable, not faceless, disconnected bureaucrats in Canberra.

But the major parties also know there are a seat-flipping number of voters willing to turf out MPs perceived to be putting their own interests or those of the party ahead of the public.

That sentiment has handed Liberal heartland to 'Teal' MPs, and now polls say more than a quarter of voters are prepared to abandon the major parties for One Nation, some of them frustrated by a system that they feel is stacked against them.

In 2019 and 2020, Labor pursued the Coalition's 'sports rorts' relentlessly — something Albanese said "stinks more than a bucket of prawn heads that you left out on a hot day".

It was a central campaign line of Labor's that it would "end the waste" and "end the rorts".

The government did tighten the grant rules and guidelines, including a requirement for ministers approving grants to hand over the decision to a colleague if the grant application was in their electorate.

That doesn't matter much if the projects were already identified and a funding amount committed before the list of projects ever reached the minister.

Sports grants cause trouble again — again

The $100 million sports grants scandal that engulfed the former Morrison ministry eventually forced the resignation of then-sports minister Bridget McKenzie, who had signed off on a grant to a gun club where she was an honorary member.

The senator claimed it was a membership worth about $30, and that she didn't know she had — in the end, she agreed the "personal interest" was a breach of the ministerial code.

More than 30 years ago, the Keating government kicked off the first 'sports rorts affair', when its then-sports minister Ros Kelly could not explain the distribution of $30 million in sporting grants to marginal electorates.

Kelly's resignation followed her revelation that funding had been arranged using a shortlist made on a whiteboard in her office, of which there was no record since it had been wiped clean.

In both cases, the Keating and Morrison governments denied bias in the awarding of grants, which in both cases had been levelled by the auditor-general.

During Question Time on Wednesday, Albanese denied knowledge of his honorary membership, but he was also unapologetic about the grant to Marrickville Golf Club and grants to a women's health centre and women's shelter.

"I support every one of the grants as a local member, and I am proud to defend my electorate, the inner west of Sydney," he said.

"If you're a good local member, a whole lot of people will give you honorary membership of things. If you're a good local member who stands up for your electorate, that will occur," he later added.

Discussing the Centre for Public Integrity's report, its chair Anthony Whealy told the ABC of his fears that voters were becoming immune to pork-barrelling.

"I think that unfortunately Australians have now become almost anaesthetised to the problems of the improper allocation of public monies," the former justice said.

"It happens so often, it happens so frequently, and it's business as usual. I think we've got to jolt the public consciousness to say this isn't good enough, we don't want this, we want a proper system that's merit-based, transparent and accountable."

The Coalition drove an entertaining Question Time this week, pushing on the issue.

But it too was planning to use the people's cash on local projects — whether that would have been spent fairly won't be known, since the Coalition didn't win.

Albanese made that exact point in Question Time on Thursday.

"I looked through the list of Coalition election commitments from 2025, and there were over 1,000 projects worth $1.2 billion. I looked for anything in Grayndler and of the thousand projects, there wasn't a single one in the inner west, not one."

The prime minister complained that the Coalition's promises would leave his seat out — while the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program left 45 electorates off the list.

Some of the poorest seats in the country missed out on a grant, with no way to even ask for a slice of the $560 million pie.

It seems a messy way of doing things where the people of Page must wait for Kevin Hogan to become PM, or the people in Wannon for Dan Tehan to take the top job, in order for grant money to swing back their way.

Pork-barrelling may not even work, according to Labor's own assistant minister Andrew Leigh.

A 2022 paper he co-authored examined the Coalition's 'sports rorts', and found they had no significant effect on voter intentions, bringing seemingly no benefit to the Coalition.

Leigh and his co-author concluded pork-barrelling does not work, even if politicians believe it does.