Yep ... pork-barrelling is alive and well! 
Labor's 'invite-only' grants scheme found to have been overwhelmingly spent in safe and marginal seats
Exclusive by senior political correspondent Jake Evans
Infrastructure Minister Catherine King and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are facing questions over a government grant scheme. (ABC News: Matt Roberts/Adam Kennedy)
An "invite-only" grants program was overwhelmingly directed into safe Labor seats and marginal seats the party wanted to win at the 2025 federal election, a Centre for Public Integrity investigation of the $560 million program has concluded.
While projects in safe and marginal Labor seats sometimes received grants worth tens of millions of dollars, 45 electorates were not invited to the Major and Local Community Infrastructure (MLCI) Program and received no funding.
Labor promised more than half a billion dollars in upgrades to sports facilities, parks and other community infrastructure at the election, and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has said the MLCI was set up to pay for those promises.
The Centre for Public Integrity's chair, former justice Anthony Whealy, said it appeared the program had been used to pork-barrel seats Labor wanted to win.
"Prima facie, it looks like the misuse of public money or serious pork-barrelling, as it's sometimes called," Mr Whealy told 7.30.
An examination of the more than 220 programs invited to apply found 73 per cent of funds went to seats notionally held by Labor, compared to 23 per cent to Coalition-held seats, and 4 per cent to all others.
"To put this another way, for every dollar spent in a Coalition seat, $3.20 was spent in a notionally ALP-held seat
," the centre's executive director, Catherine Williams, said.
When broken down by how safe or marginal a seat was, $493 million of the $560 million fund went to safe, fairly safe or competitive seats for Labor — while just $66 million went to seats where Labor was not competitive.
Dr Williams said if money had been distributed proportionally, marginal seats where Labor was competitive should have received $66 million less in total than they did, while non-Labor seats should have received approximately $116 million more.
The Centre for Public Integrity also examined whether the discrepancy could be explained by the relative wealthiness of seats using household income data, and found no link.
In fact, the poorest seats in the country received a below-average amount of grant funding.
The centre also found no link between "community connectedness", a measure of infrastructure need, and where grants were allocated.
To date the federal government has not explained what process it used to identify projects for an invitation, or why it chose to use a closed, non-competitive process.
In a statement, Ms King said the MLCI program was in line with longstanding practice and with the updated rules and principles for grants.
Ms King noted ministers do not make decisions on applications in their own electorate, with those decided by another cabinet minister.
The government says the MLCI program's guidelines make clear only those who are invited can apply for funding, and the assessment criteria they must meet to receive funding, with all funding that is awarded published on AusTender.
Applicants are required to demonstrate the social and economic benefits of the project, its viability and the organisation's capacity to carry it out.
Separately, it argues $1.7 billion in competitive and open grants was made available through the Growing Regions and Thriving Suburbs fund.
Marrickville Golf Club versus all others
Independent MP Helen Haines's seat of Indi, in north-east Victoria, was one of the 45 electorates where no projects were invited to the scheme.
Ms Haines has been pursuing details of the scheme in parliament, but she says what the Centre for Public Integrity found has surprised her.
"I was shocked by the scale of this, by the depth of this," Ms Haines told 7.30.
"I feel very, very angry actually, and deeply disappointed, that we have a government who are using a grants program such as this for what they call election commitments … but what in plain language we know is pork-barrelling."
Ms Haines said the scheme had come to her attention after a local golf club contacted her to ask how it could be given an invitation to the MLCI program.
Rutherglen Golf Club is nearly 100 years old, and in need of a refresh.
Its walls are lined with asbestos, the wood is being eaten away by white ants and the floor is sloping and needs restumping.
But Ms Haines had to tell the club, which she had worked with in the past to try to help secure a grant, that there was no way to be considered this time.
Only one golf club was invited to the MLCI program: The Marrickville Golf Club in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Sydney seat of Grayndler.
The club received a $6 million grant for refurbishments of its clubhouse, including for an accessibility ramp and fixes to the septic system.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-08/labor-mlci-grants-marginal-pork-barrellin...
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