Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in this debate. It is a very important debate, a very substantial debate, a debate that demonstrates the complete difference between this side of the House and that side of the House. The difference between us and them is very simple. We sit around the cabinet table working out how we look after working families. That is what this side of the House does. We sit around the cabinet table having a debate about how we can help working families with cost-of-living pressures. What did they do through their period in government, around the cabinet table? They sat around working out how they could rip away their wages and working conditions. That is the difference.

The difference is that we, on this side of the House, understand what life is like around the kitchen table and those on that side do not. Most particularly, the shadow Treasurer does not have a clue what life is like around the kitchen table in this country. He is so out of touch he is in outer space. This man said that inflation was a fairy story. When inflation is at a 16-year high, anybody who could say that it is a fairy story is just completely out of touch. He has lost contact with planet Earth. Is it any wonder, when people look at the way he is stalking the Leader of the Opposition, they think back to the 1980s? And what picture do they get in their mind? They see it very clearly. It was on display at the Press Club the other week. They thought: Andrew Peacock; Andrew Peacock without the suntan—absolutely no substance, all front. For him to get up in this debate and accuse members of the government of being shameless is just extraordinary. He knows no shame. Only a few years ago he was trying to join the Labor Party. He does not have any conviction. He has no conviction or any values that go to the core of this debate—none whatsoever. For him it is all about his slick debating tactics. That is it. It is not about cost-of-living pressures for Australian families.

The proposition being put here today by the opposition is a simple one, and everybody is expected to believe it because he thinks he is so brilliant. What he wants people to believe is that suddenly at 9am on Monday morning, 26 November last year, everything in the economy went bad. What he wants people to believe is that suddenly the cost of living went up. Suddenly, on the very first day that the change of government took place, the cost of living went up. That is what it wants everybody to believe—it did not happen under their 12 years. Working Australians had never had it so good, according to everyone over there. He sat in the cabinet, along with the Leader of the Opposition, and said working Australians had never been better off. The hide of them to have done that, at a time when inflation, as we now know in retrospect, hit a 16-year high! They sat across there when inflation was at a 16-year high and told working Australians they had never been better off. What gall! The pretender from Point Piper is out there pretending he understands cost-of-living pressures.

See this speech in context