Let's say, hypothetically, you lived in a rusted on Coalition seat that has been taken for granted for decades.
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A seat where the hospitals are understaffed and the pothole-ridden roads are overrun.
What would you hope your elected representative would do in this scenario?
I'll tell you what I'd hope for: a corruption scandal. One so sordid and debased that it would make even a politician blush. You can guarantee that the government's coffers would fling open with an almighty crash.
Such was the case during the 2018 Wagga byelection, when Daryl Maguire stood down in disgrace and the government suddenly remembered that life exists west of the Blue Mountains.
IN OTHER NEWS:
The pork barrelling was so blatant, so brazen, that a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry launched in July last year was forced to expand its scope. It was no longer a question of "if", but rather a question of "how much".
It started as an inquiry into the government's notoriously self-serving Stronger Communities grant, but has since expanded to include the $177 million in fast-tracked bushfire recovery funding.
The former saw about 95 per cent flow into Coalition seats, and the latter saw about 25 per cent lavished onto Wagga alone.
The political bribery was so unsubtle that Premier Gladys Berejiklian made no attempt to conceal it, simply saying it was part of the realpolitik of running a government.
"Governments in all positions make commitments to the community in order to curry favour. I think that's part of the political process whether we like it or not," Ms Berejiklian said last year.
The deputy premier John Barilaro, who has embraced the nickname "Pork Barilaro", took it one step further.
"When you think about it, every single election that every party goes to, we make commitments. You want to call that pork barrelling, you want to call that buying votes, it's what the elections are for," he told the inquiry.
And you know what? They might even have a point. After all, in a democracy politicians have an incentive to make decisions that win them the most votes.
But if the government wants to wine and dine us in the hopes of seducing our electorate, then they could at least have the decency to pick up the bill. The least they could do is to follow through on their election promises, rather than leaving us all feeling a little used and unsatisfied.
Take, for example, one of the biggest election promises of the 2018 byelection: a towering multi-storey car park for Wagga Base Hospital boasting 800 spaces, taking the total spaces to over 1200.
It was an incredible announcement for a hospital that had previously resigned itself to only getting 400 new spaces despite the ever-growing demand.
As it turned out, the incredible announcement turned out not to be credible.
Two weeks ago the development application for the multi-storey car park was approved, but only left room for 360 spaces - less than half of what was originally promised.
It did, admittedly, also include two separate at-grade parking areas, but even when factoring those in the grand total only sits at 900, which is 300 less than the 1200 figure committed in 2018.
When this newspaper asked the NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard's office to explain the discrepancy it was referred on to NSW Health, who repeatedly promised to provide a response.
Those promises were repeatedly broken, ironically enough, and no response was forthcoming for one week.
When The Daily Advertiser did receive a response from NSW Health Infrastructure, the response was as follows.
"The 1200 car parks at the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital includes free-of-charge parking spaces around the campus which is the on-street parking surrounding the hospital," a spokeswoman said.
That is some creative accounting, to say the least. By the same logic, The Daily Advertiser's office also has 1200 car parks, if you factor in the surrounding streets.
The response is especially galling when you consider that the overuse of on-street parking around the hospital was the problem the 800 space multi-storey car park was supposed to solve in the first place.
The tragic irony, from the government's point of view, is that they went on to lose the seat of Wagga for the first time since 1957 despite all of their promises. Only now are we starting to see some of those promises collapse in on themselves.
It turns out that the government can't even pork barrel us properly, but if there's one thing that they excel at, it's telling porkies.
Kenji Sato is a reporter for The Daily Advertiser.