STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr SMALL (Forrest—Opposition Whip) (13:45): Infrastructure minister Catherine King has now been crowned the queen of pork barrelling. It wasn't always like this though. In opposition, she described the Building Better Regions Fund and said that it wasn't about developing regional Australia and that it was about pork barrelling Nationals seats.

She even called another government program at the time 'rorting on a nuclear scale', but, as the minister declared on the election of the Albanese government, there would be 'no more colour coded spreadsheets and no more pork barrelling'. Yet, under the minister's Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program, $206.7 million, or 92.9 per cent of the funding, went to projects in Labor held seats.

Shock! Today, the Chair of the Centre for Public Integrity said: I think there's a heavy onus on the government now to justify the process it has used. If they cannot justify that process, then I think the public in Australia would be driven to the conclusion that this is the misuse of public money at a serious level.

Where is Minister King? The queen of pork barrelling must come forward and explain to this parliament how this has happened. How did she choose these projects?

What criteria did she use? If 90 per cent of funding to coalition seats was called pork barrelling, what does that make 93 per cent of taxpayer money being funnelled into Labor held seats?