Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Sport went down to the electorate and announced $160,000 of funding for a toilet block when the minister had criticised the previous government for a much smaller grant a little while ago. Is it any wonder that the media are calling this ‘sports rort II’?

As soon as he got into office, the minister for regional development, who comes from a Sydney electorate, closed the regional offices of his own department, set up a Better Cities unit to occupy the time of his staff and abolished the Regional Partnerships program, the Growing Regions program and the Sustainable Regions program. He set up a new Better Regions program, but this is a program that no-one who lives in a non-Labor electorate can even apply for. Ninety per cent of all the projects to be funded are in Labor electorates and Labor target seats. No-one else can even apply. This is not better regions; this is better rorts. He is the king of rorts; the man who invented the Fort Street rort; the man who rerouted the railway line through his own electorate at a cost of $300 million. This is the man who criticises other people for not appropriately spending money—

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