Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

And I do not see any dissension on the part of the member for Wentworth on that proposition. I do not see the member for Wentworth taking a point of order. I do not see him rising to the dispatch box. I do not see him crying out saying, ‘I have been misrepresented.’ No, because it would be such a huge gap between that and the reality which we all know around this place, which is that the member for Wentworth is day in, day out out there undermining the Leader of the Opposition, but most pertinently in this debate in the chamber saying that this policy on which the Leader of the Opposition stakes so much is not one which he can guarantee that the Liberal Party will take to the next election. The whole premise of the debate is fraudulently undermined by the member for Wentworth’s position undertaken publicly. Then we had the carping from those opposite.

More broadly, this is about the question of economic responsibility. On the question of economic responsibility, we heard the Leader of the Opposition utter immortal words barely 15 minutes ago when he said that when they left office interest rates were coming down—not going up; they were going down. As I understand it, back at the time when they gave this terribly responsible commitment to the Australian people that interest rates would be kept at record lows, that was not entirely capable of being honoured by those opposite. In fact, they knew when they gave that undertaking that it was a fraudulent undertaking, but they did it in order to secure votes from the Australian people. But we have, as the ultimate indictment of the Leader of the Opposition’s lack of any form of credibility, him standing in this parliament in this debate, a formal censure of the Prime Minister of the country, and saying that when they left office interest rates were coming down. Leader of the Opposition, I do not know where you are getting your economic advice from. I suggest you get some new advice, because anyone would tell you—

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