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

The interjection says it is a different job. I hear constantly the Leader of the Opposition stand at the dispatch box and say he speaks as the alternative Prime Minister of Australia, and therefore his pronunciations on monetary policy are those of the alternative Prime Minister—that is, that the Reserve Bank should act in a particular way. What we now have is the new Nelson doctrine: what I say in opposition has nothing whatsoever to do with what I do in government. In other words, the overall dictum of those opposite is to say anything, to do anything, to promise anything in order to get themselves a headline. How can the Leader of the Opposition stand credibly in the parliament today and speak about responsible economic management when he goes out one morning and says, as Leader of the Liberal Party and as alternative Prime Minister, that the Reserve Bank should take a particular course of action on rates and, in the same breath, say that if he were Prime Minister he would not say that or do that? That is where we have got to with the Leader of the Opposition. The credibility of the Leader of the Opposition on this entire debate on interest rates—quite apart from how we have got to this position in the first place, given that we have had 10 interest rate rises in a row under the Liberal Party—collapsed on the doors this morning when he said, ‘I, Brendan Nelson, will be opportunistic and say what I like on this, but I, Brendan Nelson, as alternative Prime Minister, would not do this.’ The Leader of the Opposition does not know whether he is coming or going.

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