Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Come on! That is what he said. I know those over there are trying to gild the lily, but does anyone really think that public officials are going around to electricians saying, ‘Charge two, three, four or five times as much as it’s worth; in fact, charge anything you like to pay for a holiday house or to buy a boat’? He went on to say that other people are telling porky pies. Quite frankly, I think that is a porky pie, I think that is a fib and I question the veracity of those claims. If he had any examples of corruption like that, he would be in here naming the contractors, the people that are actually making those offers to those electricians—but he doesn’t. He comes in and he simply makes these things up to try to give the impression that there is actually rorting going on in this system. Anyone that sat through the Senate estimates program would know, after hours and hours and hours of questioning of the department, that this program is being monitored and that one of the things it is being monitored for is value for money. The prices that are being put in are challenged and questioned.