Does anyone remember sports rorts, the scandal which destroyed the political career of Ros Kelly and greatly damaged the Keating government after the 1993 election? Kelly took over a scheme for sporting and cultural community grants begun by her predecessor Graham Richardson, providing federal government financial support for selected projects by local applicants who had to provide matching funds. The Opposition, supported by an enthusiastic media, zeroed in on the lack of proper procedures and the obvious political opportunism in many of the spending decisions. The lack of proper process was symbolised by the minister’s use of a white board on which to consider the applications.

One of Kelly’s most zealous pursuers was Peter Costello, who vociferously denounced the government’s “vote buying.” Securing Kelly’s ministerial scalp gave a great fillip to his career. So in 1993 spending public money in pursuit of partisan gain was a scandalous offence, denounced by all and sundry, and sufficiently important to cause a ministerial resignation.

Fast forward to 2007, and note the contrast. The lead sentence in the Australian on 5 November 2007 stated: “The Howard Government’s seat by seat strategy to reverse Labor’s poll lead will be built on targeted infrastructure and services spending.” It was an observation on what the Coalition had termed Super Sunday, when it made announcements about roads spending in the three mainland eastern states. “The focused spending - such as yesterday’s $10 billion road, highway and tunnel package for the crucial marginal seat regions of western Sydney, southeast Queensland and outer Melbourne - is designed to complement the Coalition’s successful $34 billion tax cut package in the first week.” According to a list in the Australian (although not totalled up) the “electorates benefiting” included 24 coalition held seats and seven Labor held seats. Similarly marginal coalition electorates have had a large array of spending on sporting facilities promised (although compared with 1993, both cultural grants and matching grants seem much less in evidence).

Peter Costello made no references to vote buying, and rather than outrage, the Australian treated the spending as a shrewd political strategy, reporting the handouts exactly as the coalition would wish. Interestingly, soon after, when Labor announced a regional grants program the Australian framed its 12 November report in terms of the party leaving itself open to claims of pork barreling.

The pragmatic consensus around pork barreling exercises was punctured the following week by the Australian National Audit Office. The Age (Friday 16 November), rightly calling it a damning report, gave it equal top billing on page one with the dramatic developments at the public hearings of the Victorian Office of Police Integrity. Its long report highlighted some of the more dramatic cases, and was accompanied by a penetrating analysis by Michelle Grattan. Among the findings the Age reported was the fact that ministers were more likely to approve funding for “not recommended” projects in coalition electorates and more likely to reject “approved” projects in opposition electorates. It reported how one minister, De-Anne Kelly, approved sixteen projects worth $3.5 million in 51 minutes just before the government went into caretaker mode before the 2004 election. Finally it highlighted several individual cases which were problematic in some way or the other. Under a front page headline “Bottom of the Pork Barrel” the Sydney Morning Herald gave similar coverage.

Yet the same story was only the fourth most prominent story on page one of the Australian, under the headline “Coalition accused of abusing grants.” But the Australian had some good coverage on an inside page, with good reporting of the politicians’ responses, telling extracts from the report and a good follow-up quoting a recipient of a grant which was announced before the application process was completed.

The treatment in the two main Murdoch tabloids though was markedly inferior. The Sydney Daily Telegraph splashed with a story about former ACTU secretary Greg Combet moving to a $1 million Newcastle house, ten kilometres outside his electorate. This took the whole of the front page, elicited an editorial comment and a cartoon. On page six the paper covered the National Audit report with a very strong headline “Liberals caught in $400m fund farce.” There was a single, punchy story outlining highlights of the report and some of the reaction.

Over at the Melbourne Herald Sun the only coverage of the Auditor Office report was on page 11, sharing the page with Combet’s new house, and receiving only a few more paragraphs. Its headline was “$328 pork barrel claim.” It had several quotes from the report but these were overshadowed by quotes from politicians.

The use of the word “claim” in both headline and lead sentence (even more than the Australian’s “accused”) grossly underplayed the authority of the Audit Office and its 1200-page three-volume report. It reduces the authoritative and precisely documented report of the independent and impartial arbiter to a mere clash of political opinions and interests. Moreover, there is a failure of journalistic competence in either omitting or failing to highlight the dramatic cases documented by the auditor.

In the following couple of days, the quality papers had some follow-up - for example, Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile’s questioning of the timing of the report, with some papers then pointing out that this was partly because several ministers had failed to respond to the draft report. Some attention was also given to new grants by Vaile which had not been properly approved.

But this was the extent to which the report stimulated any examination of recent government grants and promises. Perhaps, given the Australian’s earlier account of the coalition’s 2007 seat by seat strategy, we are expected to believe that there was an uncanny coincidence between the Coalition’s electoral needs and the country’s infrastructure requirements.

In contrast, Australia’s two biggest selling newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, had no follow-up. Neither paper chose to give the report strong prominence. Unlike the broadsheets, neither paper showed any flair in presentation to highlight the dramatic cases. Neither paper had any analysis or commentary articles. The outstanding feature of both papers’ coverage was their passivity.

What are we to make of this tepid response by these fearless tribunes of the public interest, and in particular the contrast between their response in 2007 and their outrage against sports rorts in 1993? Is the difference simply to do with which party is doing the act? Is it an indicator of just how far Australian political culture has degenerated in the years of the Howard government that such bribes are no longer seen as posing any moral issue? Or is it a symptom of just how far basic journalistic competence has been compromised by the partisan and commercial imperatives that have been driving these News Limited publications?

A broad group of media organisations recently joined together to form The Right to Know, an organisation dedicated to highlighting problems of secrecy, legal restraints and spin control in Australian democracy. Just before The Right to Know issued its first report, News Limited chief John Hartigan gave the Andrew Olle Memorial Lecture in which he argued that Australian media was in good shape but officialdom was becoming increasingly restrictive and manipulative.

The report from the Audit office during the election campaign is a striking case of the exact opposite. The official system has worked well, although slowly. The Australian National Audit Office has held the government to public account, but the Murdoch tabloid press has proved incapable of responding with probing journalism.