Mr BAYLEY – Treasurer, you’ve just put out a media release talking up the $86 million of funding to 100 community groups. Now, this question is certainly not a reflection on the merit of those bids and the very good work that community groups do in our community. We acknowledge they do deserve public funds and need public funds, but we will make the case that it should be done in a transparent, open and fair process.
The Integrity Commission, following the 2021 election, called the kind of process that your party engages in at election time to allocate this funding as ‘indirect electoral bribery’. During the election this year, the Director of Public Integrity, Geoffrey Watson SC, rightly called it pork barrelling, fair and square. These are decisions that are made by people inside the Liberal Party. I don’t know, and the community doesn’t know, what is the criteria? Who’s making the decisions? That was evidenced itself during the election campaign where your party – probably the only media release that it put out without someone’s name attached to it or comments attributed to it – was announcing the successful bids in relation to this funding.
It’s the third election in a row where this kind of thing is happening in the face of expert advice. Can you tell us what are the criteria by which decisions are made to allocate this funding and who is it that actually makes the decision about which club gets how much money?
Mr FERGUSON – I sense a genuine interest in this and I appreciate and respect that. All political parties are entitled and do make commitments to the electorate in an election context. I hope that will always be the case and it should be. I mean, Liberal, Labor, even Greens, I think made commitments to the electorate and there is a place for that. Tasmanians, when they are voting at an election, they deserve to know well, what will you do if we vote for you and you form a government? That’s what we did.
I will just pick up on one thing that you indicated in your question. We’re quite proud of the decisions that we made to award those organisations those funds, they’re in the Budget to be scrutinised.
Mr BAYLEY – The Integrity Commission criticised it, Treasurer.
Mr FERGUSON – I’ll come to that, I promise. The thing is, that is a fraction of the commitment that we made to sporting and community organisations. A fraction of the overall plan, which by far and away is about building stronger public services, stronger concessions for people with cost-of-living pressures, responding to the commission of inquiry and our infrastructure commitments.
Mr BAYLEY – $86 million is still a hell of a lot of money.
Mr FERGUSON – It’s a good amount of money, but it is nonetheless a fraction of our overall. I’m not trying to diminish it either, but I just want to put that perspective in front of the committee. One of the key recommendations – I seem to recall but I don’t have it in front of me – from the commission previous to this election was that if you’re going to make an election promise, particularly to an organisation, you need to not just tell the organisation. You need to publicly announce it and that’s what we did.
Mr BAYLEY – How did you make those decisions though, Treasurer? That’s the question. Criteria, and who actually makes the decision.
Mr FERGUSON – It’s an important one because you brought up the Integrity Commission report, which was from some years ago. I have a quote here. The commission report or the recommendation stated that:
When made, such promises should be backed by policy and must be publicised to all of the electorate, not just the intended recipients.
That’s from Paper 2: Grant Commitments in Election Campaigns dated April 2022.
Mr BAYLEY – Is that the same one where they called it indirect electoral bribery?
Mr FERGUSON – It could be, I’m not sure. I know that the Greens made promises to the electorate –
Mr BAYLEY – And processes by which they are undertaken.
CHAIR – Order.
Mr FERGUSON – I’m not sure you’d apply the same language to your own party. Greens don’t usually –
Mr BAYLEY – We have a different process.
Mr FERGUSON – To be fair, I don’t think the Greens normally live by the same standards they demand of others. That’s something I’m accustomed to. For us, our policies were carefully considered. I’m sorry that we couldn’t say yes to everybody, but we had to say no to a lot of people, including those who, having –
Mr BAYLEY – Against which criteria did you make those decisions?
Mr FERGUSON – One of the criteria was affordability. I had a number of organisations – I could name them, but that would be impolite – who’d received massive promises from the Labor Party and asked us if we could match it. I often had to say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re not able to do that; it’s not affordable’, which helps explain how Labor got themselves into a $4 billion promise spending spree that didn’t even result in an improvement at the ballot box.
It presents that challenge for government and for both sides of politics to try to run a fair campaign. You asked me about process – announcements are made by the party organisation in an election campaign and members, ministers and candidates are all involved in that.
Obviously, there are internal considerations to how you can ensure that commitments are affordable but also present good value for the electorate generally and lead to good social, sporting and health outcomes.
Mr BAYLEY – Treasurer –
CHAIR – Order, Mrs Beswick has the call.
