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

I did hear a voice from the past, the member for Brand, out of his Rip van Winkle-like sleep from the back, interjecting in support of the Labor Party and its downgrading of Australia’s credit rating in 1986. Who today would describe Australia as a banana republic? Yet that is the way the Treasurer of the country was describing Australia under Labor in 1986. We were downgraded a second time, incidentally, in 1989. In 1989 Australia was downgraded a second time when the Treasurer of the country then told us we were heading for ‘the recession we had to have’. We were downgraded in 1986, we were downgraded in 1989, and it was the election of the Liberal and National parties that determined to do something about it. We recovered that first downgrading in 1999 after we had balanced Australia’s budgets and we recovered that second downgrading in 2003 after we had paid off Labor debt. This took hard work. When we decided to restore Australia’s credit ratings we did not set up a committee; we did not say we would set up a committee to have inquiry or an investigation into what had to be done here in Australia. We set about hard work, balancing our budget, repaying debt, setting up the Future Fund, getting this country back on the footing that it deserves to be on so we can have opportunities in the future.

The one person who had no part at all in any of the great economic reforms in this country was the Leader of the Opposition—standing in the way, opposing every hard step that had to be taken. He had no part in the work that got Australia to where it is now, and there would be no reason to trust him to do the hard work which is required to get us to where we want to be in the future. We want to be a positive, prosperous country with room for all and on a strong financial footing. The Leader of the Opposition has no part in that vision for Australia’s future.

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