September 2026

Pork-barrelling has become so deeply embedded in Australian politics that governments, increasingly, appear to regard taxpayers’ money as their own private election campaign fund.

Australians are entitled to expect much better.
And we are certainly entitled to expect better when the person caught in the middle of the controversy is the Prime Minister.

Greg Brown, Chief Political Correspondent for The Australian, reported on 14 September that Anthony Albanese faces calls for an Australian National Audit Office investigation over a $6 million Federal Government grant to Marrickville Golf Club in his own inner-Sydney electorate – and close to a multi-million-dollar investment property owned by him.

This was no ordinary competitive grants program.
The $6 million came from the $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program — an invitation-only scheme which has already attracted strong criticism from the Greens, the Coalition, independent MPs and ABC News – because of the extraordinary concentration of money flowing into Labor electorates, especially marginal ones.

According to the Centre for Public Integrity, 73 per cent of the funding went to notionally Labor-held seats.

That is the sort of number that should concern every taxpayer, regardless of political allegiance.

In this particular case, the optics are especially poor.

Brown reports that Albanese has had a long association with Marrickville Golf Club and was made an honorary member in 2012.

He has previously spoken publicly about using the club, attended political functions there and campaigned against proposals to reduce the golf course from 18 holes to nine.

And the club has now emerged with a $6 million taxpayer-funded renovation.

Albanese insists he was not the decision-maker and says he was unaware of his honorary membership.
But that explanation sits awkwardly beside Labor’s own previous attacks on former Coalition minister Bridget McKenzie during the “sports rorts” affair.

Albanese demanded accountability then – and McKenzie was forced to resign over those port-barrelling accusations. Australians are entitled to demand exactly the same standard now.

As independent MP Helen Haines put it, the former Coalition scandal was “pork barrelling by deception”, while this program looks like “pork barrelling by design”.

Dennis Shanahan, writing in The Australian on 14 September, argues that Albanese has compounded the problem through his response — attacking the ABC and becoming defensive, rather than dealing plainly with legitimate questions about the grant.

That matters.

The issue is bigger than one golf club and one $6 million cheque.

Governments of both political persuasions have become far too comfortable directing public money towards electorates that provide political advantage.

Programs are created, eligibility rules are manipulated, competitive processes are bypassed and enormous amounts of taxpayers’ money somehow find their way into politically useful locations.

Then everyone acts surprised when the public becomes cynical.

Taxpayer money does not belong to the Labor Party.

It did not belong to the former Coalition Government either.

It belongs to Australians.

Every dollar handed out by government should be allocated transparently, competitively and according to genuine community need — not electoral mathematics.

And the person who should understand that better than anyone is the Prime Minister.

When governments treat public money as political currency, public trust inevitably collapses.

And a new independent national survey shows that only 26 percent of Australians trust Anthony Albanese.

Australians are entitled to better than government-by-pork-barrel.