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

I notice that the member for Goldstein is interjecting. I would like to highlight some of his observations on these matters on the Insiders program on Sunday. He stated, for example:

Why are superannuation funds investing in infrastructure projects in other countries and not here?

The claim that investment by superannuation funds in infrastructure in Australia is not occurring will come as something of a surprise to the people running Southern Cross Station in Melbourne, to the people responsible for the Eastern Distributor in Sydney and to the people running numerous major airports around the country, because the fact is that infrastructure is being invested in by superannuation funds. More importantly, the member for Goldstein said:

… 100 years of inconsistent regulations … They were all sitting there yesterday with an opportunity to address that …

By implication, they did not. ‘They’, of course, were the various governments around the country, state and federal, and what the member was referring to was COAG. What he obviously failed to notice was that, in fact, those governments were precisely addressing the very important thing he did refer to—100 years of inconsistent regulation—which notably the previous government over 11 years did literally nothing about. To the absolute contrary of what the member for Goldstein said, these governments—state and federal—are addressing these problems.

The member for Goldstein unfortunately is not alone in this lack of understanding of the basic principles of economic management. We notice, for example, that the Leader of the Opposition describes the prospect of the international financial crisis pushing the budget into deficit as ‘failure in economic management’ and says it ‘should be a last resort’. Yet he and his party have out there a lengthy list of very expensive, unfunded and uncosted promises to a variety of people that they have never walked away from. More recently—only two days ago—the shadow Treasurer, the member for Curtin, committed the opposition, on top of those other commitments, to introducing tax cuts as well—with, of course, not the slightest hint of any savings initiatives anywhere.

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