Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let them go, Deputy Speaker, I am enjoying it. The more they talk about this issue, the more they show their colours in regard to this. Under Jenny Macklin—she set up this organisation and gave them excellent funding to do their job—there was a plan. The plan has been broken. All this government has done is recognise that, if you have been given an amount of money to do a job and to manage that, you claim independence. You take a step back in government. They can, if they need to, criticise the new government—I have no problem with that. If there is criticism to be had, we will have that criticism. But what I will not have is the shadow minister coming into this place and putting up a motion like this just because, 'I've found a cut, I'm going to run the cut, I'm going to play myself into this organisation, this could be my future.' Let me say this—

An honourable member interjecting—

And they can write that. Let me say this, and I want to say it with clarity. When the previous government gave this money, they gave it for a specific reason: so that this organisation could exist apart from government. That is in the charter. You know that is in the charter. Now they are separate from government, they can write pieces like that in the Indigenous paper. But for heaven's sake, give our government the opportunity to manage Indigenous affairs in a much better way than the previous government did.

Debate interrupted.

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