Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member very much for his question. We inherited an absolute mess when it came to regional grants. If you remember, we got elected on a promise to clean up the rorts and pork-barrelling that categorised the regional grants program. When we came into government, we had the Building Better Regions Fund, which, of course, was subject to a substantial National Audit Office report, which found that there were significant flaws in the way the previous government made decisions. When we came to office, we found that not a single one of the proposals for round 6 of the Building Better Regions Fund had been assessed at all. So concerned were all of you about all of those programs that you asked specifically about it—

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