Buying Votes: Parliamentary Systems and Pork Barrel Politics
Part II
by Dr. David Denemark
Back to Part 1...Finally, the evidence runs counter to Labor’s contention that the reason ALP and marginal seats benefited was not because of electioneering, but because these seats coincided with electoral districts marked by high “need” – high unemployment and low income. While the erasure of Minister Ros Kelly’s infamous white board assured that no investigator could challenge their claims with documentation, 1991 Australian census data can be used to measure the average unemployment level and household income level for each electoral district in the country. By using multi-variate statistical techniques to test for the influence of each factor within ALP-held seats while holding constant the effects of all others, one finds that neither unemployment nor household income in the electoral district is significantly associated with the receipt of 1993 sports grants funds. The two significant factors are cabinet membership and level of ALP seat marginality.
1998 Natural Heritage Trust Fund Grants
The distribution of Natural Heritage Trust funds in 1998 reflects
a very different, but equally biased agenda. The Liberal/National
Coalition emerged from the 1996 federal election with a 27-seat
majority, enabling them to pursue several controversial policy initiatives
while de-emphasising a strategic preoccupation with a few marginal
seats in its parliamentary foothold. As the junior partner
in the Coalition, National was expected to support legislation which
always had the potential for serious political backlash amongst
the rural electorate: the partial sale of Telstra, services
cutbacks in provincial Australia, gun control, and more recently,
a GST and tax reform. The Queensland state election earlier
this year served to underscore these risks for, especially, National
Party MPs – One Nation forging major gains in country districts.
One of the ways a major coalition partner can reduce the electoral
costs of damaging policy stances is to reward the junior coalition
members with benefits disproportionately geared to their constituencies.
The Coalition’s partial sale of Telstra yielded the necessary resources: a $1.25billion Natural Heritage Trust Fund designed to redress problems in five environmental areas: revegetation, rivers, biodiversity, land care, and coasts and oceans. These environmental problems were found primarily in rural areas – precisely those which were feared electorally vulnerable to inroads by One Nation. The distributive patterns for the roughly $75million of NHT funds which were apportioned to projects wholly within federal electoral division boundaries are consistent with the provision of a sweetener for rural MPs and their constituents.
In Figure 4 one sees a sharply biased pattern to the party distribution of NHT funds. More than $38million, or 51% of the funds, went to the 76 seats controlled by Liberal MPs, while, more importantly, nearly $30million, or 40% of the total, went to the 18 seats controlled by National MPs. The 49 seats controlled by Labor MPs garnered only $4million, or 6% of the funds, while the 5 independent MPs’ seats accrued nearly $3million, or 4% of the total. As with Labor’s 1993 Sports Grants, then, the distribution of NHT funds points to a clear cut party bias benefiting, especially, National MPs, who represent only 12% of the House total. This bias is also evident in the size of the average grant apportioned to electoral divisions controlled by the different parties: $85,000 for ALP seats; roughly $500,000 to Liberal and to Independent seats; and more than $1,600,000 to seats held by National Party MPs.
| Figure 4 Sum of 1998 Natural Heritage Trust Grants (Distributed within Commonwealth Electoral Division Lines), by Party-Held Seats+ |
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+Independents: Peter Andren, Calare, NSW; Pauline Hanson,
Oxley, QLD; Allan Rocher, Curtin, WA; Paul Filing, Moore,
WA; Graeme Campbell, Kalgoorlie, WA. |
Though both the 1993 and 1998 tallies point to clear cut partisan bias in the allocation of grant monies, the distributive logic of NHT funds by party and marginality of seat in Figure 5, however, yields a pattern diametrically opposed to that of the ALP Sports Grants. While National seats in nearly every swing category have been rewarded with the largest average grants, overall it is the safest of National and Liberal seats that have received the largest average grants, leaving the smallest average sums for the most marginal seats. This, argued the Government, is due purely to coincidence – Environment Minister Robert Hill contending that what appears to be partisan bias is, in fact, due to National MPs controlling the rural seats where environmental problems exist.
| Figure 5 Mean 1998 Natural Heritage Trust Grants (Distributed within Commonwealth Electoral Division Lines) in Party-Held Seats+ by Marginality of Seats* |
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| +Independents: Peter Andren, Calare, NSW; Pauline Hanson,
Oxley, QLD; Allan Rocher, Curtin, WA; Paul Filing, Moore, WA;
Graeme Campbell, Kalgoorlie, WA. * 1996 post-election 2-party
preferred swing. Source: Department of Environment, Sport and the Territories, Summaries of Grants within Electoral Divisions, 1998. |
However, Figure 6 shows that amongst rural seats, while National-held constituencies received the lion’s share of funds across-the-board, the largest average grants went to the safest rural electoral divisions controlled by National MPs. Quite clearly, then, the Coalition’s agenda was anything but securing marginal seats victories. Nonetheless, the Coalition strategy behind the safe-seat priority remains a puzzle.
| Figure 6 Mean 1998 Natural Heritage Trust Grants (Distributed within Commonwealth Electoral Division Lines) in Urban/Rural Seats** by Marginality of Seats* |
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| * 1996 post-election 2-party preferred swing. ** Australian Electoral Commission classification. Source: Electoral Division Summaries, Department of Environment, Sport and the Territories, 1998. |
The patterns in Figure 7 may well hold the answer to the mystery: seats held by National Party Cabinet ministers received, on average, $2.1million – nearly $700,000 more than the average grant in seats controlled by their backbench counterparts ($1,448,577). On the one hand, this should come as no real surprise. Cabinet ministers in parliamentary systems are always in the driver’s seat when it comes to influencing the distribution of discretionary funds. Ministers have easy access to key decision-makers, and, as high profile parliamentarians, are crucial to the electoral fortunes of the party. But, unlike the marginal-seats focus of Labor’s cabinet ministerial rewards in 1993 (Figure 3), the Coalition’s NHT patterns in 1998 point to rewards for those key ministerial figures who, despite holding safe electoral margins in their seats, have been asked by a Government committed to an agenda of economic rationalisation, to shoulder the largest electoral costs to their support base. Prime examples include Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, whose rural NSW seat of Farrer received $7.1million, or 30% of the funds in NSW, and the equivalent of the total for all Tasmania – despite holding a 2-party preferred margin of 21.2%. Similarly, Bruce Scott, the National Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, attracted $2.3million to his rural Queensland seat of Maranoa, despite sitting on a comfortable 22.9% electoral margin.
| Figure 7 Mean 1998 Natural Heritage Trust Grants (Distributed within Commonwealth Electoral Division Lines) in Coalition Minister's Seats* by Party-Held Seats+ |
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+Independents: Peter Andren, Calare, NSW; Pauline Hanson,
Oxley, QLD; Allan Rocher, Curtin, WA; Paul Filing, Moore,
WA; Graeme Campbell, Kalgoorlie, WA. * See House of Representatives
Hansard, No. 20, 1997 (December), pp. vi-vii. |
All told, a close examination of the distribution of local level grants in the buildup to the 1993 and 1998 federal elections provides some important lessons about the consequence of parliamentary systems’ conflation of party and governmental power. Australia’s parliamentary system inherently tempts whichever party is in government to respond to powerful incentives and opportunities to use taxpayer-funded programs to best electoral effect, whether securing victories in marginal seats, or easing the discomfort of coalition partners and their constituents.
While the tactical intention in these distributive patterns seems clear, it is less straightforward to specify the electoral benefits of these funds in terms of the number of votes won for the incumbent candidate. This is the case because, in addition to the strategic distribution of pork barrel funds, parties in government may well pursue a variety of tactics to forge victories in vital contests, including placing more campaign funds, advertising and organisational effort into those electoral divisions. Nonetheless, it is evident from these patterns that political parties in government allocate discretionary funds in ways that are consistent with the considered attempt to secure victories in key seats, and thereby assure their collective return to parliamentary office. Hungry foxes amidst hens, it would seem, occasionally get caught with feathers in their teeth.
About the Author:
Dr. David Denemark is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Western Australia. Following completion of his Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, he taught for three years at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His current research is focused on campaigns and electoral politics in New Zealand and Australia.
