As several commentators noted, the current state of federal politics made the Magna Carta commemorations most timely in Australia. On a range of issues relating to citizenship, immigration and counterterrorism, the Coalition government has been deliberately weakening the extent of legal constraints under which it operates. In a race to the bottom, which Prime Minister Tony Abbott is determined to win and Labor leader Bill Shorten is frightened of losing, constitutional government is a major loser.

But disrespect for the law is not just a matter of politicians trampling on citizens' rights. It also occurs in humdrum aspects of public administration where public servants allow themselves to cut corners to satisfy their political masters. Modern bureaucratic government requires public servants to act in accordance with a large number of rules and guidelines that are issued under legally constituted authority. Whenever due process is bypassed or overridden, the rule of law is compromised.

The government's implementation of its "Safer Streets" program provides a classic recent example. The program was assessed in one of the last reports from the Australian National Audit Office to carry the signature of the outgoing Auditor-General, Ian McPhee. In its report (The Award of Funding under the Safer Streets Program), the ANAO identifies a series of sloppy practices revealing wilful neglect of well-established procedures.

Safer Streets is a discretionary grants program that had its origin in a commitment originally made in 2012 by Abbott as opposition leader and repeated in the Coalition's 2013 election policy. The purpose was to give modest grants to help local communities target local crime by funding improved infrastructure such as better lighting and CCTV (closed-circuit television), including mobile CCTV that could rolled out to crime hot spots. Grants would also be available to reduce anti-social behaviour and enhance community safety, particularly around retail, entertainment and commercial precincts. Though the policy did not specify any particular grants, during the election campaign a number of Coalition candidates made clear promises of grants to their local communities, typically for new CCTV systems.

After the election, implementation of the new policy, which was classed as a form of crime prevention, became the responsibility of the Attorney-General's Department under Justice Minister Michael Keenan. Because it involved discretionary grants, the program was required to follow the government's grants administration framework, which is set out in rules and guidelines administered by the Finance Department. The general statement of rules and guidelines, 37 pages long, sets out seven key principles for grant administration (including robust planning and design, an outcomes orientation, governance and accountability, and probity and transparency). All grants programs must have a clear set of objectives along with transparent and impartial criteria for assessing applications. Ministers must not make granting decisions without receiving written advice from officials on the merits of applications relative to the stated objectives.

The Attorney-General's Department duly developed a set of guidelines, which were later signed off by the minister in May 2014. The guidelines provided for a series of funding rounds, with the first round being closed and non-competitive and aimed at delivering commitments already made by Coalition ministers and candidates before and after the election. About $19 million of the initial budget of $50 million was allocated for this round.

Administration of the first round of grants, based on political commitments, forms the focus of the ANAO's report. In essence, the report shows up the difficulty of trying to fulfil ad hoc commitments made for political purposes under the rubric of a general policy aimed at public-interest objectives. As the ANAO points out, the government-wide rules for grants administration framework make no explicit allowance for electoral commitments as a reason for awarding grants. All applications must be approved in terms of meeting the program's official purposes and in accordance with the government's financial framework.

To meet these potentially conflicting requirements, the program guidelines for the first round of grants stipulated that applicants must be invited by the department to submit an application. Applications were to be couched in terms of the program objectives (dealing with hot spots and enhancing community safety). The department also developed a set of six weighted criteria, such as demonstrated need for the proposed project and consistency with proven practice in crime prevention, against which applications were to be assessed.

The ANAO accepts that these guidelines generally met the standards set by the grants administration framework. Even though the first round was non-competitive, the applicants' eligibility was to be set by their capacity to meet the program objectives. The stated selection criteria were appropriate for assessing the applications.

However, the processes of administering these guidelines were seriously deficient. A proper assessment of an application's eligibility would usually have required considerable information, for instance about whether a project adequately identified a known hot spot or would reasonably, on the basis of reliable evidence, result in crime reduction. In many cases, however, the department received insufficient information to make a sound judgment. Another common failing was that many applications did not clearly set out what the proposed project would deliver and where. It would therefore be difficult for the department to oversee the project and determine whether it had met its objectives (another requirement of the grants framework). Overall, the department made "generous assumptions" about the quality of applications.

This lax approach allowed the department to score the applications so highly it could recommend to the minister that he approve all but one of them. (In the case of the one application that was rejected, the organisation in question was given a chance to revise and resubmit well after the closing date.) According to the ANAO's own later assessment, two-thirds of the applications received (56 out of 85) did not, in its view, meet the eligibility criteria.

In effect, the departmental officials administering the program saw their role as processing grant applications that had already been approved by the government through its political commitments. The official selection procedure amounted to little more than superfluous window-dressing demanded by government protocols. If the assessments would not affect the decisions, why waste time doing them properly? In this way, political pressure induced public servants into openly contravening legally authorised rules.

The ANAO has a long history of trying to require due process and public-interest justifications for the awarding of discretionary grants. In the 1990s, the "sports rorts" affair that brought down Ros Kelly, a minister in the Keating government, was sparked by an ANAO report critical of the lack of documentation and justification in allocating sporting facilities. The Howard government also came under fire for using grants programs for volunteer equipment and for regional partnerships primarily as means of extending political favours.

The Rudd government picked up the Auditor-General's criticisms and helped institute the new framework aimed at outlawing the allocation of grants for party political reasons. However, as with political advertising, the ALP's good intentions lasted less than one parliamentary term. Under cover of the global financial crisis and the urgency of its stimulus package, the government introduced a regional infrastructure grants program that bypassed the public service and was operated out of a minister's office. Once again, the ANAO complained, pointing out the heavy bias in favour of Labor-held electorates and the flagrant disrespect for the government's own guidelines.

Pork barrelling – giving local grants for party-political purposes – is an established feature of our political culture. Especially during election campaigns, all politicians are expected to offer local goodies in return for political support. If they win office, ministers and departments must then deliver. Shoehorning specific election commitments into normal departmental processes is often challenging for public servants.

In the case of discretionary grants, the government's complex framework of rules and guidelines, doggedly policed by the ANAO, sets very high standards against the allocation of specific grants for purely political purposes without a strong public-interest justification.

Some might argue that the standards are too high and unrealistic. Governments will always want to offer local inducements and favour their own supporters. On the other hand, to condone ministerial discretion without need for public-interest justification would set back the cause of transparent and rule-based expenditure of public funds.

As the ANAO's report on Safer Streets underlines, the allocation of grants to favoured applicants was not in itself improper. The main problem was the department's failure to support the selection with a robust public-interest justification. The pork barrel is not inherently illegitimate. But like any other politically motivated policy or program, it needs to be administered in accordance with proper processes. Public servants who fail to take such processes seriously act in defiance of the rule of law and, indeed, against the spirit of Magna Carta.

Richard Mulgan is an emeritus professor with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. richard.mulgan@anu.edu.au