Less than 30 seats are genuinely up for grabs in this election and already we can see the funding promises being targeted there. Is it any wonder so many people are disenfranchised? Barrie Cassidy writes.

Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday he wants everybody to treat their vote on July 2 as if that is the vote that will decide the election.

Nice line. Nice hoax.

The fact is fewer than 20 per cent of the population will cast a vote that really matters. The other 80 per cent live in electorates where the result is pre-ordained, and the major parties know it.

Of the 150 seats in the house of representatives, 30 seats at a stretch are genuinely in play.

That our system effectively disenfranchises so many people is disappointing. But it's truly risible that those few who do live in the marginal seats get not only all the attention, but all the pork barrelling as well.

Here are the standout one-off spends in this election so far:

Townsville, in the marginal seat of Herbert in Queensland - The Labor Party a month ago offered $100 million towards the cost of a $250 million stadium for the NRL and the North Queensland Cowboys. Once completed it will host 13 games a year. Twenty four hours before pre-polling opened, the Coalition matched the promise.

Townsville, in the marginal seat of Herbert in Queensland - The Labor Party a month ago offered $100 million towards the cost of a $250 million stadium for the NRL and the North Queensland Cowboys. Once completed it will host 13 games a year. Twenty four hours before pre-polling opened, the Coalition matched the promise. The Dandenong Ranges, in the marginal seat of Latrobe in Victoria - The Coalition gives the historic steam train company, Puffing Billy, $6.5 million to build all weather facilities and to restore rolling stock. By comparison the Turnbull Government gave Victoria just $10 million towards the Melbourne Metro Rail Project.

The Dandenong Ranges, in the marginal seat of Latrobe in Victoria - The Coalition gives the historic steam train company, Puffing Billy, $6.5 million to build all weather facilities and to restore rolling stock. By comparison the Turnbull Government gave Victoria just $10 million towards the Melbourne Metro Rail Project. Gosnells, in the new seat of Burt in WA and bordering the marginal seat of Hasluck - the Coalition gives them $6 million for a baseball park extension.

Gosnells, in the new seat of Burt in WA and bordering the marginal seat of Hasluck - the Coalition gives them $6 million for a baseball park extension. The Sunshine Coast in Queensland, taking in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher - the Coalition gives them $5 million for a community sporting hub, and throws in an extra $100,000 in loose change for a rowboats clubhouse.

The Sunshine Coast in Queensland, taking in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher - the Coalition gives them $5 million for a community sporting hub, and throws in an extra $100,000 in loose change for a rowboats clubhouse. Prahran, yes Prahran, bordering Toorak and South Yarra in Victoria, in the "safe" seat of Higgins, the home of Holt, Gorton and Costello - is getting $4 million for new netball courts. Why, when Higgins is not marginal? Maybe because this time the Greens are seriously threatening to win it, polling close to 47 per cent two-party preferred.

What the discretionary one-off spend in this election campaign demonstrates - as it has repeatedly - is that those in close seats are showered with gifts while those in the safe seats are routinely ignored.

Phil Coorey, writing in the Financial Review, identified $1.7 billion in "below the radar" carefully targeted pork to the half way mark of the campaign. He wrote:

An analysis of about 95 micro announcements made variously by the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, his ministers and in some cases the MPs themselves, shows $1.3 billion of the money has been used to sandbag marginal seats, with funding for projects including revamped football club change rooms, new netball courts, fixing mobile phone black spots, fighting crime and preventing or managing illness.

Some of it can be justified, but surely only if it is spread evenly, and fairly, around the country.

Occasionally safe seats - like Murray in Victoria - get to share in the largesse as well.

Under convention, the Liberals and the Nationals only go head to head when the sitting member retires. That's the case this time in Murray with Sharman Stone's retirement.

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So what happened?

The Nationals deputy leader, Fiona Nash, offered $10 million towards the cost of a new home for the Shepparton Arts Museum. The money comes from the Nationals' regional development fund. That's one bit of pork barrelling that did not amuse the Liberals.

Undoubtedly the spend works. But in the longer term it will encourage the further emergence of minor parties, and particularly independents. And why wouldn't it?

If those living in safe seats feel they are being taken for granted, then the best response is to turn that seat into a contest. If it's a safe Liberal seat, the voters will never turn to Labor, and vice-versa. The answer is a strong independent; somebody with a profile and established community respect.

The best example of such a phenomena happened in Victoria at the last state election.

The campaign had started in the seat of Shepparton with the electorate resigned to the fact that the Nationals would win again, as they had done for 47 years.

But with just four weeks to go before polling day, Suzanna Sheed, a lawyer married to the city's top paediatrician, stepped up from nowhere, launched an aggressive last minute campaign and won the seat.

Her pitch in a nutshell was that while hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into other regional cities like Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong, where tight contests are routinely staged, Shepparton got nothing. It was time to rebel, and they did.

Sheed highlighted that while pork barrelling in election campaigns might give the major parties short term gain, it is building resentment further afield and whetting the appetite for more independents like her.

But despite all that, the Prime Minister's words are not totally wasted. When he says treat your vote as if it will decide the election, absolutely do so - in the Senate! Because at least in the contest for seats in that chamber the power of every vote is equal.

You can argue that the smallest states getting equal numbers of senators to the biggest states is hardly democratic either. But again that's the system we have. At least in the senate contest every vote genuinely counts, no matter where you live.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC TV program Insiders.