Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

And so, in the riotous celebration on the part of those opposite—led by the member for Higgins, who has come back to life, I notice, all of a sudden—about whether we are going to have the first meeting of the Australian Council of Local Governments on 28 November or a few days either side of it—big point!—the key thing is whether in fact we have any such engagement with local government at all. And I would say to those opposite: if they were faintly engaged in serious national reform, if they were faintly engaged in the need for local government to have constitutional recognition or faintly engaged in the local funding needs of local government, what they would do is endorse what the government is doing rather than seek to make cheap political points.

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