Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Again I appreciate the objection raised by the current Leader of the Nationals, who no doubt is pretty sensitive about what the former leaders of the National Party were doing. As the Deputy Speaker has said, the current Leader of the National Party was busily trying to explain why there was a delay. It is a fair question: why was there a delay? Unfortunately, the explanation was not good enough, so I am trying to provide the explanation here by looking at what the former leaders of the National Party were doing, what the former ministers for transport were doing. They were more focused on the Regional Partnerships program and more focused on attacking the Auditor-General, who was raising real problems with the Regional Partnerships program, saying that the ministers had overridden departmental recommendations against approving certain projects, mostly those in coalition electorates—

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