Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer today claimed that I had wilfully rorted public funding and the Minister for Health claimed that I had misappropriated public funding. The facts are these: the Audit Office report confirms that two-thirds of the project funded across rounds 3 and 4 the of RDAF were in seats not held by Labor. Seventy eight of the 121 projects were funded in coalition, Independent or other seats. Just 43, or 35 per cent, of the projects were in Labor held seats. Every single one of these projects was recommended by Regional Development Australia committees and then went through a panel process as well as a value-for-money assessment by the department of regional Australia. If I was rorting or misappropriating, clearly I did not do a very good job by funding all of the projects or two-thirds of them in your seats.

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