Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slapped down public servants in the nation's capital, suggesting local MPs were best placed to determine where government grants should go rather than Canberra bureaucrats.
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Mr Morrison has started his final full day of campaigning in the Liberal-held Perth seat of Swan, which the party hopes to retain following Saturday's election.
Allegations of pork-barrelling of taxpayer funds have dogged the Morrison government over the past three years, with the so-called "sports rorts" and "carpark rorts" scandals fuelling calls for a federal anti-corruption watchdog.
The Prime Minister visited a leisure centre in Perth to promote a promised $2.4 million upgrade of George Burnett Park as part of its community grants program.
Mr Morrison said he would continue to listen to advice from his party's representatives on where funding should go, over public servants "looking at bits of paper" in Canberra.
"The best people to make those decisions are your local representatives that you supported, not people sitting over in Canberra who's probably never been here and [are] looking at bits of paper," he said.
"Now we respect and value the advice we get from our public service about these things, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it's local communities that we want to support and it's the communities that are raising these important projects with us."
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The comments follow in a similar vein to an earlier slight over the weekend when Mr Morrison said he regretted leaving the vaccine rollout to the Health Department.
At a press conference in Melbourne last Saturday, he said, in hindsight, he should have moved sooner to appoint Lieutenant General John Frewen coordinator general of the National COVID Vaccine Taskforce.
The Prime Minister has consistently rebuffed claims his cabinet has prioritised funding to marginal and Liberal-held seats in order to gain election advantage.
Following a report by ACM last month revealing $116.6 million in Community Development Grants had been allocated to marginal or hotly contested electorates between the budget and the calling of the federal election, he responded there was no link.
Mr Morrison said promising money for projects was a core to an election campaign, and made reference to an aged care facility he visited earlier in Caboolture where the Coalition promised upgrades to telecommunication infrastructure.
"I just don't buy it," he said.
"What elections are is we go to Australians, like in Caboolture where we were today, with seniors who can only get one one bar on their mobile phone or only 3G, and they need some additional mobile towers.
"They raised that with Terry [Young], their local member."
Labor leader Anthony Albanese has promised his party, if elected, would put an end to the "rorts", cancelling millions of dollars in grants programs and using it to improve the budget's bottom line.