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

Unfortunately for the member for O’Connor and, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition and the entire opposition, there is a very serious side to this. That is, they are adopting a position that implies massive job losses, massive business failures and huge economic contraction. If you took $25 billion out of the budget now, guess what that would do: it would devastate economic activity in this country. It would trash jobs. It would trash employment. It would trash economic activity. Thousands of businesses would be bankrupt. They are adopting the economic policies of Herbert Hoover that directly led to the Great Depression. That is the serious side that I would urge the member for O’Connor to look very closely at, and I would urge the Leader of the Opposition, who clearly is totally confused about their position, to get with the government’s position, which is that deficits are unavoidable in order to sustain jobs and economic activity in the Australian economy.

See this speech in context