Political Gold: The Australian Sports Grants Scandal

The partisan allocation of public funds has a long history in Australian politics. Using a unique dataset, which allows us to distinguish the merit-based component of the funding decision from the politically based component, we examine the 2018–2019 Australian sports grants scandal. We find that local funding allocations for sports infrastructure were directed disproportionately to win marginal electorates and to reward loyal supporters. However, contrary to our expectations, we find virtually no electoral impact of the grants: those electorates that received more sporting grant funding were no more likely to swing in favour of the government in the 2019 election than electorates that received no funding. A straw poll of members of the House of Representatives suggests one possible explanation as to why pork-barrelling persists: parliamentarians tend to overestimate its electoral impact.