The Auditor-General's report finds serious faults in every stage of the car park program's administration from initial conception to eventual implementation. Of particular relevance for the pork-barrelling issue is the way in which funds were allocated to individual car parks. The scheme comes under the Urban Congestion Fund, which provides for the funding of "investment projects" under the National Land Transport Act. As investment projects, allocations for car parks do not count as community grants and are not subject to the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines which cover most such decisions (though not, significantly, grants made by Sport Australia at the time of the "sports rorts" affair). The UCF does not require a competitive selection process for infrastructure projects and allows ministers to make suggestions and take final decisions.

Nonetheless, the relevant department (the Department of Infrastructure) has administrative obligations arising from the government's UCF governance arrangements agreed in 2018. These arrangements include "five UCF principles" to be used in identifying and selecting projects: focused on high value works; smaller scale and co-funded; driven by evidence; encourage innovation; support for wider urban development. The department is obliged to assess proposals in terms of these principles and to advise ministers accordingly.

For most of the 47 car park sites selected by the minister, assessment was perfunctory and seriously deficient, with no attempt to assess formally against any criteria based on the principles and no serious consultation or gathering of evidence. More than half were approved the day before the caretaker period began, with only a few days allowed for the department to process them. When submitting these proposals to their minister, Alan Tudge, the department advised that, given the limited time and information available, it was "not in a position to recommend funding the proposed projects or provide detailed advice on the relative merits, scope or costings of the potential projects". Instead it confined itself to some "high-level comments" based on information already to hand. In other words, the department implicitly admitted that the process was not following the UCF arrangements and principles but made no attempt at push-back over such a clear breach of process. It did not openly state that the minister was asking the department to contravene the government's own rules. Instead, it quietly went along with abuse of process to suit the political convenience of the government.

In subsequent correspondence with the Australian National Audit Office, the new secretary of the department, Simon Atkinson, claimed that the projects were election commitments made during an election campaign that the government had directed the department to implement "consistent with delivery of election commitments". The Minister of Finance, Simon Birmingham, made a similar argument when questioned about the legitimacy of the car park allocations, claiming that they were vindicated by the government's election victory.

The ANAO, however, convincingly refutes the argument. The car park allocations made before the caretaker period began were all signed off by the Prime Minister and were included as existing financial commitments in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2019. There was no suggestion that their approval was contingent on the outcome of the election (which the government, incidentally, was widely expected to lose).

Certainly, the government announced the decisions during the campaign and, in the public mind, they could have easily been confused with election promises. But the public service is expected to know better. The description of the pre-election decisions as election commitments is all the more egregious when "election commitments" are a well-known and distinct category of policy, with their own set of guidelines promulgated by the Department of Finance. Moreover, the department was well aware of the difference because it clearly identified a number of other car park projects as election commitments which were formally listed in the Prime Minister's post-election "election commitment authority" letter. If the government had wished the pre-election decisions to be treated as election commitments it would need to have issued a clear instruction to that effect.

The department's obvious sophistry about election commitments is merely one of a litany of administrative failings identified by the ANAO. But it does underline the extent to which senior public servants are conniving in, or at least condoning, their ministers' wilful contempt for due process in government. Infrastructure projects may not formally count as community grants, like sports facilities or community safety measures that have been the subject of recent charges of pork-barrelling. But the administrative principles are broadly similar. Ministers make the final decisions, as elected arbiters of community need and the public interest. But to guard against abuse of this power, ministers are required to consult with their officials who give objective advice on the merits of proposals. Any decision must be justified in terms of the public interest in a transparent and accountable manner. It is the responsibility of officials to see that the rules are followed and that any breaches are clearly brought to the attention of ministers.

Such principles are not intended to prevent ministers from acting for electoral advantage or from benefiting some sections of the community over others. Indeed, in the context of elective democracy, any such expectation would be both unrealistic and undesirable. Their aim is much more limited. Elected ministers should simply be required to submit their decisions to a fair and reasonable process and to justify them in terms of their own interpretation of community need and the public interest, notoriously flexible concepts. Public servants, for their part, should be obliged to conduct the process according to transparent rules, without political interference.

The structure strikes a balance between two sets of legitimate values: the right of democratic politicians to respond to community demands and the need for administrative process and the rule of law. At present, the balance is badly out of kilter, with politicians riding roughshod over due process and public servants unable or unwilling to constrain them. Unfortunately, public discussion oversimplifies the issues and misses this key point. Critics insist that politicians should keep out of such decisions altogether, leaving them entirely in the hands of department officials or independent boards. Ministers, on the other hand, argue that the power of ultimate decision has always been theirs. Each side talks past the other.

Certainly, there is a strong case for reducing the number and size of community grants and other funds that provide opportunities for governments to improperly target marginal seats. But such a reform would be opposed by both major parties and would require a level of public disgust with pork-barrelling that is so far not evident.

The immediate problem, however, is not that ministers are making such decisions but that they are doing so in a way that ignores their government's own rules and prevents departmental officials from fulfilling their constitutional duty to uphold due process. With the next election almost upon us, a reassertion of professional standards is a matter of urgency. Within the APS, everyone, from the secretaries down, needs to recognise their duty to uphold the government's own procedures even in the face of pressure from ministers' offices. At the same time, ministers, on behalf of their staff, should commit to giving public servants time and space to do their constitutionally allotted job. Is such an endorsement of well-known administrative conventions too much to ask?

If it is too much, what does that say about the state of our polity?

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