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

It is quite clear that those opposite are not just ideologically committed to Work Choices but that, given half a chance, they would bring it back. Work Choices is etched deep into the heart and soul of those opposite, and they stand at the dispatch box and bleat about the concerns they now profess to have about the circumstances faced by working families. I say to those opposite—particularly to the ever-interjecting member for Curtin—that, when a person is facing the prospect of losing their job, one thing they would like is to have some certainty about redundancy payments. Redundancy payments are one of those things stripped away by the now very bored, very yawning member for Menzies, who regards this as trivial.

The problem with those opposite is that their economic narrative not only is designed to talk the economy down; it also fails to deal equally and in a balanced fashion with the positive economic news that is out there. That concerns capital expenditure data, the data which was produced today on corporate profits and the data on the trade account, which the Minister for Trade referred to. What I would say for the period ahead is that this will be a period of great economic test and challenge, not only for our country but for other countries going forward. There are going to be bumps along the road. When you have the set of global economic circumstances that we face at present, that is unavoidable. The challenge is this: do you have a strategy of action for the future on this—and we have a clear-cut course of action—or do you have, as we do from those opposite, a simple strategy with one objective, which is to talk the economy down? In six questions from the opposition today there has not been a single reference to a policy, not a single reference to an alternative solution, not a single positive suggestion about anything. They have a simple strategy designed to talk the economy down and they hope that they get from themselves a cheap headline on the way through.

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