Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Tangney for his question. The expectations in relation to inflation here in Australia are that inflation has moderated somewhat and should be within our band of two to three per cent over the course of the forthcoming year. In most of the developed economies of the world, inflation expectations are low. For example, in the United States the latest CPI is 2½ per cent, in Britain it is three per cent and so on. There are some countries around the world that have very high inflation rates. The Economist’s table of inflation has one country in particular that stands out as a very high inflationary society, and that is Venezuela, where inflation is currently running at 18.4 per cent.

Members will know that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has threatened to nationalise the oil industry and the phone industry. President Hugo Chavez has described the President of the United States as a killer, a genocidal murderer and a madman. So it may come as a surprise to the House that President Hugo Chavez has his admirers in Australia, and these admirers have invited him to come to Australia. They have written an open letter to him which says:

We have watched developments in Venezuela with great interest. We have been impressed by the great effort that your government has taken to improve the living standards of the majority of Venezuelans ...

Although we are on the opposite side of the globe we feel that our shared ideals of social justice and democracy bring us close together.

Aside from half of the trade union movement of Western Australia which has signed this open letter to President Hugo Chavez to come from Venezuela over here to ‘Brutopia’ to tell us how to run an economy, signatories to this invitation include Warren Mundine, National President of the ALP, and Senator Gavin Marshall, ALP senator for Victoria.

I would have thought that the Leader of the Opposition, who is so concerned about the US alliance, would not have his own senators inviting to this country a man who calls the US President a genocidal killer and who went to the UN General Assembly and, from the podium at the General Assembly, called the President of the United States the devil. So now that we are all into the business of protecting the alliance and making sure that nobody says anything that could possibly prejudice the alliance, we will be looking forward to the Leader of the Opposition disciplining Warren Mundine, disciplining his own Senator Gavin Marshall and explaining to us just what the President of Venezuela could advise us on how to improve ‘Brutopia’ here in Australia.

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