John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Can I say in relation to working families that there has not been an echo because when Labor was in office there were fewer working families than there are now. The echo did not work. Let me say again—and it is a very, very serious point to make in this place—that the man who sits opposite me does not have a plan of his own for Australia’s economic future. He either mouths a platitudinous agreement with things that we have done and practices what I call ‘echo-nomics’ or, alternatively, when he cannot do that and he is told what he has to do by the trade union movement, he advocates policies that are dangerous to Australia’s future. This country wants as its leader somebody who has got some plans of his own—not plans that are an expeditious echo of those of others or the dictatorial requirements of an out of touch trade union movement.

See this speech in context