Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that this particular application was not approved by the previous government and that it was under assessment at the time of the government change. Therefore, because the Regional Partnerships program has been closed, there are two categories. The first is those projects that have been fully contracted and will be honoured by the government. There are 420 of those. The second category is the not-for-profit applications that were approved and not contracted. They have until 31 July to be put forward. There are 86 of those projects, and 55 of them are in seats held by the coalition.

The government believed that a common-sense approach was to ensure that they were not disadvantaged by the maladministration that occurred under the previous government where, under Regional Partnerships, in a 51-minute spending spree before the 2004 election just before they went into caretaker mode, 16 projects were approved for some $3.3 million.

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