Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My calculations say that definitely. The idea of constitutional recognition was interesting. I was in local government when that idea was put to a referendum. One of the arguments was that we could not, as a federal government, deal directly with local government because it was not recognised under the Constitution, although several of the local governments were recognised under state constitutions, which were in turn recognised by the Australian Constitution. The argument was that we could not deal directly with local governments. We have proved that wrong now.

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