The new Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has announced a national corruption watchdog will have powers to probe politically motivated pork barreling. 

It follows a key election promise from the newly formed Labor government: to form an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) by mid-2023.

According to the ABC, Dreyfus said getting the watchdog operational was a key priority for the Labor government. 

What is pork-barreling?

ICAC describes pork barreling as “the allocation of public funds and resources to targeted electors for partisan political purposes.” 

Simply put, pork-barreling is the exercising of public powers to favour the interest of a political party, rather than the interest of the public.

The term implies it might be a bit ‘greasy’, which you could say is an accurate description of under-the-nose political dealings. 

At the end of 2018, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the coalition would introduce a Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC), which would be “a serious new commission with teeth which would protect the integrity of Australia’s Commonwealth public administration.”

The response, however, was not well received. 

The Centre for Public Integrity found the proposed commission would be the “weakest integrity commission in the country.”, and leaves a wealth of political scandals unchecked, such as the 2021 commuter car park project pork barreling allegations and the 2019 Crown Casino scandal to name a few.

If Morrison proposed a ‘commission with teeth,’ it had very little bite. 

“It’s more of a cover up commission than an anti-corruption commission,” said Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on ABC Melbourne Drive last month.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General told SoPerth one of the biggest problems with the coalition’s model is it wasn’t transparent. 

“There were no public hearings or investigations announced. If there were, you never would have heard about it.”

In fact, the Liberal’s commission was so weak it was unable to commence its own independent inquiries into Government corruption, prevented from holding public hearings into politicians or public servants, and was banned from investigating any of the multiple past scandals of the Morrison Government. 

“It wasn’t an independent body. So let’s say if a minister were accused of corruption and they chose not to be looked into, they could not investigate.”

Fast forward four years later and we have a new government under Labor, who said creating a corruption watchdog is their paramount objective. 

“We’re completely transparent and can hold public hearings. We can look as far back into the past as we need to,” said the Attorney General spokesperson. 

Mr Dreyfus said the New South Wales ICAC has the power to hold public hearings, but less than 5 per cent of all of its hearings are conducted in public. 

“What they need is the discretion to hold a hearing in public. It’s an absolutely vital feature because it builds confidence in the administration of the Commission and the administration of government,” he told ABC Radio National this week. 

“It’s another ridiculous deficiency in Mr. Morrison’s model that he would ban public hearings in any investigation of a minister or an MP.”

“It’s one of the many, many deficiencies in the Liberal Party’s model,” said Mr Dreyfus. 

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