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

I thank the member for his question. In uncertain global times, confidence in key economic institutions, in key financial institutions and in key regulators is absolutely paramount. That is particularly the case given that we are in the midst of the worst financial market crisis since the Great Depression. Because of that it is indeed surprising, I think, that the opposition have over the past 48 hours gone out of their way to slur some of our finest public servants and to trash some of our finest economic institutions. Just think about that for a moment. Given what is going on around the world, why would the opposition choose this time to attack the head of the Treasury, an independent Public Service department—a man who has worked for both sides of politics and has been with that department all his working life? Why would they do that in the middle of a global financial crisis?

The Leader of the Opposition was given the opportunity to come into the House and apologise for that attack, but he simply was not man enough. What is worse is that it was because the Secretary of the Treasury had the temerity to say that regulators supported the government guarantee on deposits that he had to be trashed. So what happened after that? What happened was that Senator Abetz, a senior member of the opposition frontbench in the Senate, attacked the honesty of the Treasury secretary in the middle of a global financial crisis. He certainly did not apologise. And what has happened today? What happened today was something far worse. They sent out the member for Canning to attack the Reserve Bank governor personally. That is what they did—to accuse the Reserve Bank governor of political bias because he put up interest rates prior to the last election.

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