Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator McKenzie. It is nice to get a question from the National Party. We're still waiting for one about agriculture, but one day they'll get there. It is important that we ensure that the Commonwealth government infrastructure program can actually be funded and delivered and that there are the skills available to build these projects. That is something that the former government never had any concern about, because all the coalition ever used to do is get out the colour-coded spreadsheets, work out which seats they needed to put some projects into and they were off to the races. They said: 'Off we go! We'll go out there and make some commitments. We won't worry about whether we can pay for them. We won't worry about whether there are the tradies to build them. All we will do is go out and make an announcement. We'll trick people into thinking they are going to get a big road, and we'll never actually get around to delivering it.'

I note Senator McKenzie has something to say about Auditor-General reports. I would have thought she would be wanting to stay away from that. But we are all happy to talk about Auditor-General reports that happened about the former government, including Senator McKenzie, whether it be sports programs or infrastructure programs.