Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I will not take them on notice; I will answer them. I understand that our exports have reached a record level. We have never exported more than we export today. The proposition of the Labor Party is that there should be a massive increase in government spending on exporting, apparently. At the end of the day we believe in the private sector economy. I suppose this is what has historically differentiated the Labor Party from the Liberal Party and the National Party. This is a blinding revelation to some people, but we are not socialists. We actually do not believe in the government conducting all of these activities.

We do provide assistance. We had to cut the EMDG, I seem to remember, in 1996, when we were left with an $11 billion budget deficit. The Labor Party had scheme after scheme—the government will do this; the government will do that. The government will set your alarm in the morning and make you a cup of tea, the government will drive you to work and the government will export your goods and services—the government, the government, the government. Members opposite are socialists. They love all that sort of stuff. We believe in the private sector, in the genius of private enterprise, in the liberal market economy. When the honourable member’s father was a member of parliament the Labor Party used to be much more into socialism than it is today, but over the years the Labor Party has realised that just about everything it ever stood for was wrong. Imagine spending your whole life arguing for something and then admitting you were completely wrong. This is the Labor Party at its worst: why isn’t the government spending more money here and more money there? We know what the Labor Party’s point is: like the state governments, if Labor became the Commonwealth government it would blow out the budget and go into massive debt. The ordinary people of Australia would pay the price, through higher interest rates and a weaker economy. We know that. The Labor Party wants to spend more on this and more on that. That is all we have heard from it today. I will not take the questions on notice because they are the usual sort of rant about how we should be spending more government money—and not pursuing responsible budget policies. Yet we have the highest level of exports we have ever had in the country’s history. I think that statistic answers the question very fully.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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