Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Sixteen years of growth should have allowed us to make Australia the most highly educated and skilled nation on earth. Sixteen years of growth—what a fantastic opportunity we have had to invest in future prosperity by investing in our people, but it has been squandered by the Howard government. Instead of guaranteeing that prosperity for future generations, they have simply endangered it by their complacency and by their lack of understanding of what is required in a globalised world to produce future prosperity. This is a Prime Minister that is at war with the future, out of touch and stuck in the past. This government has no long-term strategy for tomorrow’s prosperity.

What they do have is only a short-term strategy for John Howard’s re-election. After 16 years, what do we see? We see faltering productivity because they wasted the opportunity to invest in our people to generate future prosperity. Instead of investing in the future, they have been playing a cruel trick on us, scooping up record taxes, handing some back—mostly just before election time—and selling our prosperity short. There is much that our economy needs, there is much that needs to be done, but this government only has one direction—that is, to slash the rights, the wages and the living standards of Australian workers.

Every family understands that in the highest earning years of your life you invest in the future. You invest in your home; you invest in your kids’ education. But Mr Howard and Mr Costello have spent like drunken sailors—

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