Senate estimates to grill officials over $660m Coalition car park fund
Officials from the infrastructure department will be grilled by a Senate committee about a car park fund that doled out $660m to projects identified by Coalition MPs and candidates.
On Thursday a request by two Labor senators and Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson to the chair of the Senate rural and regional affairs and transport committee triggered a spillover estimates session to inquire into the fund.
In a scathing report, released on Monday, the Australian National Audit Office found that not one of the 47 projects was chosen by the department and car park sites were instead selected through a process that “was not demonstrably merit-based”.
It found 87% of the projects were located in 23 Coalition-held seats or six target seats where Coalition MPs and candidates were consulted about project selection.
Labor will use the estimates committee to examine project spreadsheets referred to in the ANAO report. The audit found the office of the then-urban infrastructure minister, Alan Tudge, asked to add potential projects and a column to the spreadsheets for the government to set their relative priority.
“The minister’s office advised that it would then go through the spreadsheets with the prime minister’s office and the deputy prime minister’s office, ahead of a related meeting between the minister for urban infrastructure and the prime minister,” the ANAO said in its report.
The shadow urban infrastructure minister, Andrew Giles, said the “major scandal” of the commuter car park program had “failed both in terms of good governance and project planning, leading to ineligible projects being funded, massive cost blow outs and ongoing delays in delivery”.
“Most seriously, we learned the lengths the Morrison government went to in the political targeting of projects, with secret spreadsheets shared between the then-minister Tudge and the prime minister’s office and prime ministerial meetings held to determine which projects to fund,” he said.
“Just like sports rorts, this scandal goes right to the top … It goes right to the heart of this government.”
The ANAO report found two projects were cancelled in December 2019 just months after they were announced. Another project was later found to be ineligible and four were cancelled in May 2021.
About 11 projects worth $175m have had no assessment work – meaning “a project proposal had not yet been received from the identified proponent”, the report said.
Labor MPs have complained that projects such as the $15m Balaclava station car park in Melbourne were doomed to failure by a lack of due diligence. In that case, the land identified for the project had already been committed to public housing.
On Thursday Guardian Australia revealed details of two projects – in Gosford, New South Wales, and Mitcham in South Australia – that the ANAO found had been selected for federal funding with no authorisation evident beyond a press release from Scott Morrison.
The assistant treasurer, Michael Sukkar, has attempted to shift blame for the cancelled $15m Mitcham car park on to the Victorian government, which has labelled his claim that it had been unable to build it as “completely false”.
The urban infrastructure minister, Paul Fletcher, who took carriage of the program in December 2020, has defended the program, writing to the ANAO that two-thirds of the projects had been announced during the election campaign and the Coalition had been “elected to deliver them”.
“The remainder were decisions of cabinet, as has been standard practice for major transport infrastructure decisions under successive governments,” he said.
Giles said that while Fletcher “sees nothing wrong with the grants, minister Tudge and the prime minister have gone into hiding, failing to answer any questions on the scandal”.
“Australians deserve answers, but the Morrison government has gone to ground.”
The committee chair, Susan McDonald, rebuked Labor for airing its plans in the media.
“It is a long-standing convention that matters and business of committees are not discussed publicly, McDonald told Guardian Australia.
“Given that the media has received the application before I had, then this will be a matter that is also considered at the next private meeting of the committee.”
The Senate estimates hearing will question ANAO officials, but cannot compel Morrison, McCormack, Fletcher and Tudge, to appear as they all sit in the lower house.