Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the last few years, the government have wanted to talk about anything except inequality, and we now know why. I'm not talking about their attacks on penalty rates and regional Australia; I'm not talking about their stuffing up of the NBN; I'm not talking about their attacks on the health system. I'm actually talking about the recent analysis of the Community Development Program, where they have been caught red-handed rorting the funds that have been set up for all Australians. We have looked at where they've spent the money and we can tell you that, over the last four years, for every dollar that they have spent in a Labor electorate in New South Wales, they have spent $37 in one of their own electorates. If you look at Queensland, for every dollar that they have spent in a Labor electorate there, $138 has been spent in one of their own electorates.

There have been some winners in all of this, I've got to tell you, because over on that side they have this thing called 'bucks for the boys'. If you look at the electorates around the country that have the most money, that struggling electorate of Wentworth, the Prime Minister's own electorate, managed to pull in a grant of over $20 million. That was also the case in North Sydney. Then you have the Deputy Prime Minister's electorate, one of the most awarded electorates in the country, which received $17 million. If this is not bucks for boys, I don't know what is.