Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will withdraw ‘knave’. Thank you for that instruction. Restating it, the question then is: is the Treasurer a fool or—in line with the dictionary—an unprincipled or misguided fellow? If he intended the consequences of this amendment, he is seeking to put this country in a position in which if the Governor of the Reserve Bank engaged in corrupt or dishonest conduct he or she would be immune from dismissal. It is difficult to believe that any responsible or competent Treasurer would seriously suggest that was an appropriate outcome. On the other hand, if that is not the case—if the Treasurer is not behaving in a deliberately unprincipled fashion—then one can only say that this is incompetence of a very high order. What it does is add nothing to the independence of the Reserve Bank. What it does is discredit the integrity of the Reserve Bank and demonstrate the extraordinary ineptitude of the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia.

See this speech in context