Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The premise of the question is that the absence of legislation underpinning the contracts that the government is going to offer wholesale borrowers of funding, mainly financial institutions and in particular banks, would in some way undermine the integrity of those offers. This is a premise that I do not accept and the government does not accept. Should a government in the future, for example, this government, ever be called upon to fulfil such a guarantee because an organisation has collapsed—a remote eventuality, I hasten to underline, and the government has stated that from day one—the premise behind the Leader of the Opposition’s question is that the attempt by the government of the day, perhaps the Rudd government, to get legislation through the Senate to honour that guarantee would fail. I wonder why the opposition might consider that an attempt by a government to fulfil an obligation to the Australian people in management of the Australian economy might fail in the Senate. I wonder why the Leader of the Opposition might consider that to be a serious possibility. I assert that any future government that is required to honour such an obligation would have the support of the parliament in honouring such an obligation. The government in pursuing this guarantee is doing so on the basis of the executive power to enter into contracts, and that is how the government intends to proceed.

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