Audit reveals Labor’s misuse of public funds
27th November, 2014
THE Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has released a damning report into the former Government’s administration of the Regional Development Australia Fund, which highlights Labor’s waste and mismanagement and total disregard for taxpayers’ money. The report focuses on rounds 3 and 4, where the then Minister for Regional Services, Local Communities and Territories (and now Shadow Health Minister) approved a total of $226 million in grant funding for 121 projects.
An advisory panel established by the Minister was responsible for assessing all applications and recommending which projects should be approved to receive funding.
According to the report, the “Minister was well briefed on the assessment of the merits of eligible applications and provided with a clear funding recommendation” (Page 108).
However, the report reveals that much of this advice was ignored, with the ANAO finding that over a quarter of all projects (48 per cent of the total funding) approved by the Minister under rounds 3 and 4 had not been ‘recommended for funding’ by the advisory panel.
Worse still, the Minister approved 23 projects worth almost $91 million (or 40 per cent of the total funding) that the panel specifically recommended not to fund as they did not represent value for money or achieve the objectives of the programme.
According to the report “there was not a strong alignment between the Minister’s funding decisions and the panel’s recommendations” (Page 116).
It goes even further to reveal that in round 4 alone, of the 42 eligible applications funded “the Minister made 34 decisions that diverged from the recommendations of the panel” (Page 119).
Not only were the Minister’s decisions irresponsible, it appears she intentionally deviated from proper process for political purposes only months out from an election.
This is despite Australia’s worst ever Finance Minister Penny Wong stating that under rounds 3 and 4 “funding requests were assessed by an independent panel through a transparent, merits-based process, with projects measured against criteria such as value-for-money, eligibility, risk and viability” (Media Release, 25 June 2013).
The report identifies that 80 per cent of the Minister’s decisions to not fund applications recommended by the advisory panel were from Coalition held seats – 93 per cent in round 3 and 54 per cent in round 4.
Furthermore, 64 per cent of the Minister’s decisions to fund applications that had not been ‘recommended for funding’ were from ALP held seats, compared to 18 per cent in Coalition held seats.
The only conclusion that can be made is the Minister had total disregard for delivering value for taxpayers’ dollars and was more interested in using RDAF rounds 3 and 4 as a political vehicle to help prop up a failed government.
As the report clearly highlights, “it is difficult to see such a result as being consistent with the competitive merit-based selection process outlined in the published program guidelines.” (Page 27).
The findings of the ANAO’s report further supports the Coalition’s decision to not fund Labor’s RDAF round 5 projects which were recklessly announced in the dying days of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, with full knowledge they could never be delivered and most never underwent any assessment process. They were nothing more than a cruel hoax on communities across Australia.
A copy of the ANAO’s report can be found at: http://www.anao.gov.au.
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