Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. This is a portfolio which manages about $70 billion a year and the person who would seek the office of health minister if Labor were to win the next election, the member for Ballarat, has just been found by the Australian National Audit Office, as was mentioned by the Treasurer, to have presided over the Regional Development Australia Fund in a way that was not acceptable to the ANAO. I think this is a very, very serious issue that all Australians should contemplate. Australians were angry with the Rudd-Gillard-Ruddgovernments, angry with the waste of money that had taken place over the course of six years, and the Australian public have not forgotten the fact that Labor ran up $676 billion of debt. Australia has not forgotten that these people who sit on the front bench of the Labor Party today were many of the same players in theRudd-Gillard-Rudd years. These people were trained by Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard. They were incompetent when they were ministers and they are being exposed as incompetent now as shadow ministers. What we need to examine is whether or not these people contesting the next election are competent enough to sit on this side and manage portfolios worth $70 billion of taxpayers' money. That is the important question that the Australian public need to ask.

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