Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Parkes for what is a very important question. Last Thursday afternoon, in the midst of unimaginable sadness, with the news about Phillip Hughes, there was an Auditor-General's report tabled in this parliament, which was startling in its nature. It revealed a Labor Party in government which, knowingly, went out of their way to abuse taxpayers' money for their own political benefit. It was probably the worst ANAO report that many of the officials in my department have seen. It is a report that highlights just how desperate the former government got in their dying days. It was a government that created a process. Former minister Simon Crean, who is a good man, created a process. He appointed a committee and the former Labor member for McMillan, Christian Zara, to head that committee. They asked the committee to make recommendations about which projects under the RDAF rounds 3 and 4 should be funded and then they completely ignored it. They overturned nearly all of the decisions. In fact, out of 42 decisions that were made, 34 of them were overturned by the minister.

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