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

That is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition—old motormouth over there—said. In the face of all of this evidence and in the face of the Leader of the Opposition saying that he supported our stimulus package in full, he went on television yesterday saying it was just hyped up. This shows how dangerously out of touch the Leader of the Opposition is with Australian families and, of course, with Australian business. He has no idea about the magnitude of this challenge before us and before the globe. He thinks the crisis is overhyped and, if he thinks it is overhyped, he does not necessarily agree with the solution.

This morning he was interviewed on Alan Jones and he said that he did not necessarily support the payments to families. He thought that what would perhaps be better would be some sort of general tax cut spread thinly across a wider range of people. This shows he does not actually understand what we are doing or why we are doing it, because the family payments are directly targeted to be paid in a lump sum before Christmas. That is a very important part of what needs to be done, given the magnitude of the challenge that is before us.

The Leader of the Opposition wants to have it both ways. He wants to say he supports the package, then he wants to turn around to say the problem is hyped up and then he wants to disagree with the individual measures. Listening to the Leader of the Opposition, it reminds me of that old saying of Mark Twain’s: ‘All you need in life is ignorance and confidence.’ He has it in spades.

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