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

Here is a political party that has decided for political reasons to raid the Future Fund for $2.7 billion whilst it is demanding that governments not be allowed to engage in political interference. Here is the safecracker demanding that banks up their security. He is out there raiding the Future Fund and demanding that it not be allowed to be raided by people like him. He was right a week ago—he was absolutely right a week ago—and he is wrong now. Let me make the point: the first burglary is the hard one. Once you have done it once, you can do it twice; you can do it three times; you can do it four times.

The other thing that Mr Tanner promised in this article is that he is going to run a tighter ship than Peter Costello. The article says:

Labor wants business to believe a Rudd government would run a tighter ship than Peter Costello—

and the evidence for that is a $2.7 billion raid on the Future Fund. That is a much tighter ship! How about this for the tighter ship? The Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin records that Eddy Sarroff, a Gold Coast councillor, has been asked by opposition leader Kevin Rudd to be the Labor candidate in McPherson. Councillor Sarroff said he agreed to run on the Labor ticket only after Mr Rudd promised a $2 billion infrastructure upgrade for the Gold Coast. Two billion for one seat! They saw Eddy and they said to Eddy, ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ and Eddy said, ‘No thanks; I’ll be a double billionaire.’

We have Eddy Sarroff—$2 billion for the seat of the Gold Coast. We have Eric Ripper out there today. He says he has his own infrastructure promise from the Leader of the Opposition, for Western Australia. We have the $2.7 billion raid on the Future Fund. And all of this is designed to show that Labor can run a tighter ship than the coalition! If you would believe that, you would be like Eddy Sarroff. You would believe that there is $2 billion coming to buy his seat in the Gold Coast.

The member for Lilley sat down. He was just about to intervene, no doubt. I figure that 150 seats at $2 billion a pop is $300 billion that the Leader of the Opposition is out for, which of course is more than all of the Commonwealth revenue collected in one year. Let me say that this Leader of the Opposition gets played as a patsy. Any time someone wants money, they are down asking for it. He cannot say no. He cannot stand up to a state premier. He cannot even stand up to Eddy Sarroff.

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