Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As far as the Economic Security Strategy is concerned, the coalition stood ready to offer full bipartisan support; all we asked of the government were details. Did we receive them? No. Offers of talks and discussions with the opposition, and even ideas put forward, were recklessly dismissed. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer simply decided to go it alone, not even bothering to have discussions with the Governor of the Reserve Bank. Apparently they knew better than the governor!

This failure to listen, this failure to heed advice, caused a huge mess. I refer particularly to the introduction of the unlimited bank deposit guarantee scheme. The freezing of thousands of people’s funds, a lot of whom are self-funded retirees who need that money, only added to the chaos. But this was in keeping with the repugnant disdain with which the government view the aged. Clearly, no thought went into the possible outcome of their rushed, headline-grabbing attempt to save Australia. Their advice to those people whose funds were frozen, leaving them in hardship, was to ‘just head down to Centrelink’. What an insult. What a joke. The opposition asked for details—

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