The Howard Government continued pork barrelling again this week. One day after Prime Minister John Howard turned the first sod for the $1.3 billion Alice Springs-to-Darwin railway, his Minister for Defence, Peter Reith, announced that the Australian Defence Force’s new operational headquarters would go to Queanbeyan.
The decision to build the railway was flawed it from the beginning. It will always be a large white elephant and a burden on the taxpayer. The idea that it would be used to ship goods into the Asian market was fanciful. Producers of goods in that the southern part of Australia will use the cheaper and only slightly less timely sea routes, as they do now. The railway was only ever a plan to help the last remaining Liberal state government in South Australia and to help the Coalition in the fight for the two new Northern Territory seats at the next election. Hitherto, the single Northern Territory seat had always been marginal, swinging backwards and forwards from Labor to the Coalition over past 25 years. At the next election the Northern Territory will have to two seats – Solomon, based on Darwin and Lingiari, comprising and the remainder of the territory. Notionally, Solomon is a marginal coalition seat requiring a 2.4 per cent swing to fall to Labor.
Queanbeyan, the place Mr Reith announced as the host for the new operational headquarters, is the largest population centre in at the seat of Eden-Monaro. Eden-Monaro is held by the Liberal Party’s Gary Nairn by just 262 votes. It is the fifth most marginal seat in the nation. It has gone with the election winner in every election for the past 29 years.
The operational headquarters, officially named Headquarters Australian Theatre, will be the site for co-ordinating military operations involving Australian forces – – maritime, land, air and special.
The decision to locate it in Queanbeyan came after intensive lobbying by Mr Nairn – – which was acknowledged and praised by Mr Reith as evidence of Mr Nairn’s qualities as a good at local member. Coupled with the fact that Queanbeyan has little or no merits as a co-ordinating defence site, a more blatant example of political-pork barrelling is hard to imagine.
Sites closer to the defence infrastructure in Canberra or at Holsworthy in Sydney or Williamtown near Newcastle were more obvious places for the facility. But that presumes the selection was being done on the defence merits not upon bringing some construction and government jobs to a marginal electorate.
Mr Reith’s announcement yesterday was a dead giveaway. He said, “We made this judgment on the basis of looking at merits, we did have a very detailed process which we examined the various factors which should be taken into account. A site in this general region was always on the shortlist for the final selection and that was for a very good reason.”
Surely, if it was a very detailed process a more precise site would have emerged, rather than just the Queanbeyan region. Moreover, the wording gives the government an out if it wins the election because HMAS Harman which is in the ACT is nonetheless in the Queanbeyan region and at least has some merit as a site for a defence facility.
But even that would be an unsatisfactory result. The RAAF base at Williamtown already houses the Australian Warfare Centre and offers a secure site on a property owned by the Commonwealth. Its logistical and costs advantages are considerable.
The government is being naive if it imagines voters will be conned by the Queanbeyan move. If anything, they will be disgusted at the costly perversion of government processes