Erm, there have been much more blatant grabs. At the official opening one Tasmanian senator crowed about what he had "won" for his voters.
To inject some reality, the normal facilities people were asked to decide where to put the radar and their decision was implemented from a very high level indeed. It may have helped that the facs people had managed to pick exactly what the very high level indeed people wanted them to, but it was all justified and @ss-covered.
It wasn't done on a whiteboard.