The Good Oil by Rod Brown*
The Deputy Prime Minister allegedly offers the independent member for New England an overseas posting to skedaddle. The Federal Police cannot find evidence of any wrongdoing. Everyone gets very indignant. So call for a Senate Enquiry! The trigger to the episode was the government’s announcement of $6 million for the Tamworth equine centre in the election lead up. Funny how history repeats itself. Not too long ago the Keating/Howe Government was being accused of pork barrelling with its Regional Development Program (RDP), and it actually funded the Scone Equine Centre!
Let me explain. Scone Council approached Minister Howe for around $1.5 million towards an equine research centre. The argument was that the region is the most significant racehorse breeding region in Australia, and that a TAFE, top class pre-training facilities and an equine research centre to address strangles, a disease inflicting high mortality rates on foals, would help realise the long term potential.
The TAFE was in place, the NSW Racecourse Development Fund had paid for scientifically graded training tracks, a convention centre was planned, and the local breeders were investing in the R&D centre by committing one service fee for each of their stallions in that season.
The fun began when Scone Racing Club asked that the federal funding go towards the construction of stables. They had the brilliant idea of the stable fees paid by the trainers going towards the running costs of the research centre.
Minister Howe’s then minder (now Mayor of Yarra City) rang me and properly asked why the hell would the Deputy PM, who was a former Methodist Minister and now a champion for the homeless, would want to be housing horses!
Umm…so we advised the Scone folk of the bad news. But back they came with a proposal for the Feds to instead invest in the engineering infrastructure that surrounded the complex. Problem fixed. The Minister attended the big Scone race meeting to announce the grant.
To Brian Howe’s credit, he never once overturned the Department’s recommendations on which programs should be funded under the RDP.
Hopefully the Senate Enquiry will expedite grant payments in future, because regional Australia does have infrastructure deficiencies, and Federal grants programs are important.
Grants problem was predicted
We do not expect much to come out of the Senate Enquiry into the regional grants. The Department of Transport and Regional Services administration of the program is very tight and painstakingly laborious – to avoid any criticism of ‘whiteboard’ decisions. But we did predict that the heat would be on the politicians for holding back the announcement of grants until the election was looming. Nothing illegal about this, but back in August, in this very column, I observed as follows:
“The compression of expenditure commitments into a narrow window, and the accompanying uncertainty for those with funding applications in the system, raises the question of whether it’s time for some sort of Code of Practice to govern the processing and announcement of government grants. From where I sit, there is a case for a cap to be placed on the percentage of program expenditure that can be announced in the run up to elections. Another option, which the Department of Finance has surely ruminated over, is the introduction of quarterly expenditure allocations without rollovers – this would mean that if Ministers don’t spend their budgets within a specified period, they would lose it. A bit radical perhaps.”
Bruce Billson – star on the horizon
We were listening to the BBC World Service, and on comes Bruce Billson, the new Parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, explaining the government’s aid package for the tsunami disaster. And what a great job he did – logical, measured and straight down the line.
Bruce Billson is the member for Dunkley, down Frankston way – 38 years old, with a Masters from RMIT and an executive with the former Shire of Hastings and Western Port Development Council in 1992–94. In his maiden speech to Parliament in 1996, he referred to his first job with Frankston City Council emptying parking meters in Frankston and added that Local Government has been his primary trade.
Bruce is one of the new faces of the Liberal Government and, judging by his recent performances, he will gain greater prominence.
OECD hub in Pacific?
We run a network called Clusters Asia Pacific (CAP) and we are heavily into Local Government issues. Our co-chairs are Rodin Genoff (City of Playford SA) and Tracy Scott-Rimington (Cairns Region Economic Development Corporation).
CAP is a member of the OECD’s Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Program, and vice versa. We have been tracking the major work the OECD does in helping eastern Europe get onto its feet, on the basis that it could play a similar role in the Asia Pacific region. Our reasoning is that there are massive development issues to be addressed in this region and multilateral approaches must be promoted, notwithstanding the bilateral trade deals currently in vogue.
One option that CAP is quietly floating is for an OECD LEED Centre in the Asia Pacific region, along the lines of the Trento (Italy) model. The objective would be to establish a multilateral think tank focusing on trade/aid/investment opportunities and bridging the rich-poor gap. It would marry expertise from around the world. We believe that the OECD’s solid pragmatism is sorely needed.
A related option is for a joint venture think tank involving the UN and World Bank, whose profiles are pretty low in this region. A hub and spoke arrangement involving nodes in Sydney, Singapore, Wellington or wherever might be possible.
Now along comes the tsunami disaster, which now provides a further reason for something to happen. If you have an interest in such matter, we would like to hear from you.
Finally, may we take this opportunity to extend our sincere condolences to families affected by the tsunami.
* Rod Brown’s Canberra based consultancy group, Australian Project Developments Pty Ltd, specialises in industry/regional development and government liaison. For further information telephone (02) 6231 7261 or email apd@orac.net.au
