Hundreds of Canberra public servants helped prepare seat-by-seat "cheat sheets" that the Coalition has been using to plan its political advertising.
But senior bureaucrats have united to stop the public release of the documents, arguing it is not in the community's interest to make them available.
Opposition parties accused the Government last night of a "scandalous" abuse of public resources for political ends, and demanded to see the sensitive files.
Departmental staff spent thousands of hours over several weeks compiling the briefings at taxpayers' expense before the election campaign began.
The documents provide a precise map of how billions of dollars in discretionary funds were spent by electorates over the three-year parliamentary term.
Several Liberal sources have confirmed that government MPs and candidates are using the briefings as the basis of local letter and leaflet campaigns.
However, key departments will not issue them to the media, shielding the Government from potential accusations of pork-barrelling.
If made public, the briefings would allow voters to scrutinise the amount of taxpayers' money spent in marginal government seats against allocations in other electorates.
The Canberra Times, which has seen parts of the confidential briefings, attempted to obtain them in full under freedom of information law. However, the bureaucracy placed them out of reach by charging a hefty price.
Four departments alone Education, Communications, Defence, and Family and Community Services wanted more than $50,000 to reveal how they had spent taxpayers' funds.
Liberal frontbencher Joe Hockey, who holds the public service portfolio, said it wasn't his role to oversee what information individual departments made public.
His spokeswoman said, "Ministers are entirely removed from the freedom of information process and are not responsible for departments' decisions."
She said Mr Hockey was not aware the briefings had been given to Coalition candidates to help their campaigns.
Neither Education Minister Julie Bishop nor Communications Minister Helen Coonan, whose departments charged the most for the documents, agreed to overturn the decisions to withhold them.
They would not say why the files were given to Coalition candidates.
Labor's public accountability spokeswoman Penny Wong said the documents should be publicly available.
"The Howard Government seriously thinks taxpayers' money is their own. Australians are entitled to know how their taxes are being spent."
She said the briefings were another example of public resources being misused in the Government's long "record of politicising the public service".
Democrats senator Andrew Murray, who introduced several Bills to remove restrictions on public information, said charging for the briefings was unethical.
"It's profoundly improper and profoundly immoral but, sadly, it's not illegal," he said.
The briefings include seat-by-seat breakdowns of local spending, such as:
The $15.8billion AusLink fund for roads and rail.
The $1.2billion Investing in Our Schools grants.
The $1.1billion Connect Australia teleco package.
The $361million Regional Partnerships Program.
The $200million Community Water Grants scheme.
The $130million Environfund.
Most departments said they would not issue the briefings because the information in them was already public.
When asked where, they said electorate breakdowns were not published.
Communications, Information Technology and the Arts executive Cheryl Watson opted to charge $20,973 to see the full analysis of her department's spending.
She ruled access was not in the public interest, arguing they would not "add to the sum of knowledge in the public".
Education Department senior lawyer Mark Murphy, who charged $21,168 for the full education briefings, agreed there was "general public interest in information about government spending priorities and that this information may be more topical during an election period".
However, he was "not satisfied ... releasing the documents would contribute valuable material to a public debate".
The Environment Department "regretted" not publishing the briefings, a spokeswoman saying it was constrained by "the need to ensure that material is not used or could be perceived to have been provided for political purposes during a campaign".
Most departments offered to reduced charges for access to a small section of the documents, but Industry was the only department to offer a glimpse for free.
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