Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to discuss the initiatives that are being put forward by the government. Before voicing my opinion on the Australian Business Investment Partnership Bill 2009 and cognate bill, I would like to place on record that I have supported the government’s initiatives in relation to the various stimulus packages that are out there, mainly because I have some sympathy for the logic underlying why these packages have been produced. As I understand it—and I know the opposition has been opposed to these particular packages—the government are of the view that, due to global circumstances, there will be a period of time during which the economy will slow. Obviously, with a slowing economy there will be some employment impacts. To overcome those particular impacts, the government’s logic—which, as I said, I have voted for—is to stimulate the economy to such a degree that it can essentially fill that gap in terms of what would happen normally and what they perceive will happen due to the global slowdown. In recognition of that period of slowdown, they have injected fairly large amounts of money to try to plug that growth crisis, as they perceive it. As I said, I have supported those initiatives.

But I cannot support this current initiative before the House. I think the member for Lyne outlined a number of issues in relation to this legislation. I listened with some degree of interest to the contribution earlier of the member for North Sydney, who is in the chamber at the moment. I heard him talking about the role that he played in relation to the privatisation of the State Bank of New South Wales. I was in state parliament at that particular time and, it being a hung parliament, I had some knowledge of what went on. I probably have more now than I did then but I nonetheless had some knowledge. One of the things I was very interested to hear the member for North Sydney say was that, even though the state at that time was the major shareholder—

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