Retired Independent MP Rob Oakeshott has told an audience in Brisbane that he is glad he backed the Labor Party in 2010, criticising the Coalition government’s handling of the budget.
Mr Oakeshott, along with independent Tony Windsor, did a deal with Julia Gillard to put a Labor government in power after 2010’s hung parliament.
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He told a Brisbane Writer’s Festival audience on Sunday it was too early to call the coalition a ‘functioning government’.
“I think it’s too early to call on many fronts as to whether it [the coalition] can be a functioning government but I’ve got to say one year in, and particularly the way the budget process is being handled, I’m very comfortable with the decision I made in 2010,” Mr Oakeshott said, according to a Sky News Australia report.
Mr Oakeshott, who resigned from politics in 2013, said he, Mr Windsor, and Independent MP Bob Katter, faced the decision to back Julie Gillard’s ‘transactional’ leadership style or Tony Abbott’s ‘crash or crash through’ method.
According to the report, Mr Oakeshott told the sold-out crowd that Prime Minister Tony Abbott would need to negotiate with ‘foes’ in the Senate, lower house and within his own party to pass key budgetary measures.
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