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The Victorian government has accused the prime minister of back flipping on a promise to re-allocate more than 1 billion U.S. dollars to a major road project on Wednesday.
Abbott has asked for the return of the entire 1.2-billion-U.S. dollar sum, which was granted to Victoria to fund the now-defunct East West Link road tunnel in November, a move that has been labeled as "childish" by Victorian Labor leader Daniel Andrews.
Andrews said Abbott was engaging in "confusing and tiresome quarrel," and that he would be writing a letter to the prime minister in an effort to re-allocate the funds to a different road project in Victoria, after the planned road tunnel was scrapped late last year.
"This is not a matter of law, this is all about politics," Andrews.
The Abbott government earmarked the funds for the East West Link but, once it was dumped, said it would try to cooperate with the state government to push the funds into another road project.
The East West Link was scrapped last November after the Andrews- led state Labor government replaced the Liberal state government which drew up the plans.
Last week, Abbott said he would happily reallocate the funds if a project "stacks up."
But on Wednesday, the federal government's budget papers revealed that it wanted the entire sum back, stating that Victoria had broken its "contractual legal obligations" to build the East West Link.
Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas said the state government had already planned to allocate the 1.2 billion U.S dollars towards the Western Distributor project, proposed by a private infrastructure company earlier this month.
Pallas labeled the federal government's decision "inconsistent and shambolic."
