Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In concluding this procedural debate I make a very simple point: we are at the logical end point from last Wednesday when the Leader of the Opposition rose to his feet in this parliament and said that the Liberal Party in both the House of Representatives and the Senate would vote against the government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan.

One thing that the Liberal Party appears not to be prepared to understand is that political decisions come with responsibility. When your leader made that announcement on your behalf you were saying that you wanted this plan to fail. You have achieved what you wanted and you now must take the political responsibility for that. And the political responsibility is that a stimulus package the nation needs is being denied to it. You have a few hours to change your mind, and what you ought to do in those hours is ring some people in your electorates. You should ring a school principal—

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