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

The Leader of the Opposition, of course, has not retracted his comments earlier in the week when he canvassed the possibility of dismissing the Secretary of the Treasury because he disapproves of the Secretary of the Treasury. He then unleashed the dogs of war in the Senate to launch a further attack on the Secretary of the Treasury; finds that entirely amusing. His office today then unleashed the member for Canning to launch an attack on the Reserve Bank of Australia. His remarks said that Glenn Stevens had been caught out: he put up interest rates before the election, during the election, when the rest of the world were bringing down interest rates. In other words, it was an orchestrated attack by the Liberal Party, attacking the independence and the integrity of the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia and attacking the Secretary of the Treasury. And earlier we had the attack on ASIC itself on the question of the future of short selling. These are three of the principal arms of Australia’s independent financial regulators. What we have is the Leader of the Liberal Party launching a short-term political attack on their independence. I would say this to the Leader of the Liberal Party: if you have any interest in the long-term—

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