Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Throughout the Prime Minister’s remarks today, in all his public statements this week and, indeed, in his long treatise on political ideology, we see one false premise and one piece of political hypocrisy after another. Just consider one of his closing remarks which we have just heard. He outlined his proposals and he said, ‘The alternative is to do nothing.’ So there is no alternative except the proposals put up by the Prime Minister. There is no alternative, no deviation. Nobody is right other than him. Throughout this speech we heard the most extraordinary falsehoods. He said:

This fall in revenue will drive Australia into a temporary deficit even before any policy action is taken by our government.

Yet we know by looking at his own document that we were given a few hours ago—so much for working with everybody and reaching out to cooperate—that the $22 billion deficit, for the year ending June 2009, is mostly constituted of the $19 billion of extra spending. So there will be a large deficit this year. Yes, it has been contributed to by a decline in revenues—no doubt—but the largest element of that deficit is because of decisions taken by the government to increase spending.

He says that Australia is in a stronger position than other countries because—and this is the height of hypocrisy—the government, his government, built a strong surplus last year. They built it, so they say. The only full year for which the Rudd government can claim to have responsibility is 2008-09, the year we are in, and we know that, far from building a strong surplus, what he has built is a very large deficit. The only reason he started off with a strong surplus when he took office was the strong surpluses and the sound economic management by the previous government over 11½ years.

In his speech here today and, of course, at much greater length, and some would say inordinate length, in his essay in the Monthlywhich seems to have been written by a number of people, but apparently he was the principal contributor—he complained about a failure of regulation and about neoliberalism. He talked about the way in which neoliberal governments, in which he includes those led by the Liberal Party in Australia, have recklessly deregulated financial markets and brought on the problems that we are now facing. Yet, only a few days ago, the Deputy Prime Minister in Davos said:

We have open and competitive markets backed up by a world class financial and prudential regulatory system.

Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister went on:

Given the flaws exposed by the global financial crisis in financial and prudential regulation I would say our system—

by which she means our system!—

is even better than world class.

So what is going on? How could these political extremist, neoliberal deregulators create a world-class financial and prudential regulatory system, which on reflection the Deputy Prime Minister says ‘is even better than world class’?

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