Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

This idea that the budget is going to be rescued by returning to 4.5 per cent economic growth from 2012 is just utterly unrealistic. Economic growth of 4.5 per cent was barely reached at the height of the recent economic boom, a boom which members opposite say has gone, and gone forever, and yet now they are relying on the magical reappearance of 4.5 per cent economic growth to do the job which they should do themselves—namely, putting this budget and the finances of this nation back into the good repair that they inherited from the former Prime Minister and the former Treasurer.

I want to pay tribute to the former Labor government, the Hawke-Keating Labor government, because that Labor government used the recession of the early eighties to introduce serious economic reforms from which this country is still benefiting. The Hawke-Keating government, for all its mistakes and for all its faults, was a government of courage and insight. The Hawke-Keating government turned out to be a different kind of Labor government: a Labor government that was, in significant respects, pro business; that could slay Labor sacred cows in order to produce a stronger economy and, ultimately, a better country. But I am afraid this Labor government is a government of a very different ilk. What Prime Minister Rudd has done is use the recession to revert to traditional Labor type. What we have seen confirmed over the last few weeks but particularly in last night’s budget is that this is a borrow-and-spend Labor government to its core. It has far more in common with the tradition of Gough Whitlam then with the tradition of Bob Hawke, and Australia will pay the price of this for many years to come.

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