John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In reply to the Leader of the Opposition, my assertion is that we are not playing the blame game. We seem to have had a new mantra in Australian politics in the last week, and that is: you are never allowed to say anything critical of state government because they are all Labor; it is perfectly in order to criticise the federal government. However, if the Leader of the Opposition does not believe me when I say that the Commonwealth and the states are cooperating appropriately, he might believe the person who said the following thing on 14 July 2006:

Prime Minister I think it’s fair to say that the meeting today, and even indeed the informal discussions at The Lodge last night, show cooperative federalism in action. And I agree with my colleague from Victoria, those who seek to denigrate this relationship don’t understand it. Cooperative federalism is producing results for Australia, and indeed this relationship between the States and the Commonwealth is probably the best in Australia’s history ...

Those were the words of Peter Beattie, the Premier of Queensland—

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