‘Crime only happens in Labor seats’: Coalition claims Labor rorting crime grants

Labor leveraged an invite-only $20 million fund to install CCTV networks across critical electorates, prioritising its own seats and high-value Coalition targets before the last election.

The Coalition seized on the “Strengthening Community Safety” program as another example of Labor using grant programs to shower seats in cash after Anthony Albanese heavily criticised the previous Coalition government for manipulating grants programs.

As Albanese cancelled his honorary membership of a golf course in his electorate that received a $6 million grant , details of the safety program grants have been unearthed by the opposition.

The Greens secured a Senate inquiry into the $560 million fund on Monday. It will report back by mid-November.

The safety program funded 20 upgrades, 17 of which benefited seats Labor held before the election in May 2025. Of the programs in non-Labor seats, a $1.5 million upgrade was used for projects in Peter Dutton’s old seat of Dickson in outer Brisbane, won by Labor, and nearby Petrie, which Labor also picked up.

Another $600,000 grant benefited programs in the marginal Coalition seats of Deakin and Menzies in Melbourne, also seized in Labor’s landslide victory last election, when it picked up 17 new seats .

Other non-Labor seats to benefit included Leichhardt in Queensland, which Labor won off the Coalition, and Kennedy, held by independent Bob Katter.

Most of the grants were for CCTV, lighting and other safety features in a critical clutch of seats that were either marginal or deemed at risk by Labor, including McEwen ($2.25 million), Hawke and Gorton in Victoria, Parramatta ($2.2 million), Reid and Richmond in NSW, and Tangney in Western Australia.

“Unbelievably, crime only seems to be a problem in Labor-held seats,” said Ben Small, the opposition assistant spokesman for infrastructure.

Labor came under pressure from the Coalition and crossbenchers last week over revelations that nearly three-quarters of the cash from a $560 million grants program went to Labor-held seats.

The government argues that it is relying on long-standing precedent on funding election commitments presented by candidates at election time. These differ from grants programs that include competitive tender processes, which were at times misused by the former Coalition government.

This masthead reported that the auditor-general , responding to an opposition complaint, had moved a step closer to a full audit of Labor’s election funding programs.

Albanese fired back at the Coalition in parliament on Monday after opposition frontbencher Angie Bell asked if a $6 million grant to the Marrickville Golf Club “increase[d] the value of his investment property down the road?”

Amid a fiery dispute over the incendiary question, Albanese said: “It wasn’t so much a question as a smear. Its imputations are completely false.”