Yes minister

While the individual programs that Ministers use to influence recipient decisions number in the hundreds, they account for less than 8.5% of the value of all grants. This still amounts to over 27,000 grants or nearly $7 billion in government spending since January 2018.

To put today's grant-making into context, the 2008 Strategic Review came about as a result of concern over an 'explosion' in grant programs that took place between 2003 and 2007 which saw grant spending to mushroom from $494 million to $4.5 billion. In today's money, that equates to a fraction of current grant spending. At the heart of the report is a concern with grant-making as a fit-for-purpose means of achieving policy aims.

The perennial issue of using discretionary grant programs in an attempt to win seats has a long history with the more recent scandal which took the scalp of Bridgett McKenzie showing how few lessons were learned after a similar episode featuring Ros Kelly, in the mid-90s under the ALP.

More recently, the 2012 High Court challenge to the funding of the National School Chaplaincy Program demonstrated that discretionary grant-making can be as legally questionable as it is politically motivated.

Echoing the 2008 concerns that discretionary grant-making is not an appropriate mechanism to fund policy without the scrutiny provided by authorising legislation, Williams v Commonwealth showed the dubious legal standing on which many grant programs had been funded.

These cases opened a can of worms for contracts worth billions of dollars. The government swiftly gaffer-taped over the yawning chasm of accountability with stop-gap legislation so these grant programs could continue. So where does this leave the use of Ministerial Discretion?

Having only grown in value and number over the decades, grant programs have become such a substantial part of governing that they have come to take over such administrative functions as cancelling eligibility for income support to job seekers. Such responsibilities granted to any organisation other than the government would have been unthinkable decades ago. This politicisation of government administration has become so uninhibited that the smell of our decaying principles is becoming too strong for comfort.

Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey tells LSJ: "There seems to be a growing attitude at both the Commonwealth and State levels that Ministers have complete discretion, particularly in relation to spending public money, and that there is nothing unlawful about them using governmental resources for personal or political gain.

This, of course, is wrong. At the very least, such action will often breach administrative law requirements that govern the actions of decision-makers, but it will also sometimes breach the Constitution, statutory limits on ministerial power, finance laws, anti-corruption laws and codes of conduct for Ministers and Members of Parliament."

With over 40,000 organisations across the country now invested in receiving government funding through discretionary grants, successive governments have succeeded in embroiling a substantial sector of the economy in carrying out their policies. In one sense this could be viewed as a democratisation of government administration, devolving this power to non-government organisations.

It could also be viewed as the colonisation of community organisations by government, requiring organisations that were once expected to have independent voices to tow the government line, and in doing so, silencing dissent.

Set against this backdrop, I hope that providing the breakdown of grants by the decision- making process used to award each of them and the electorate of the organisation in receipt of each grant can empower both experts and the public with greater insight into how government funding is spent, providing much-needed transparency.