Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

And the vests. Whenever you see fluorescent vests and hard hats coming, you know the Labor caucus and a few ministers are on their way. You should have one of those safety signs there—’Danger! Reckless Spender’—because that is what we get from those opposite. What we have seen from those opposite in the last week tells the whole story. That is why the Prime Minister, grudgingly, after a week of evasion, finally uttered the budget debt figures and the Treasurer finally uttered the deficit figures. But this is their stock in trade. As we have seen with the employees share scheme fiasco, two weeks of chaos—absolute chaos. The first instinct when a mistake has been made is to cover it up, to ignore it and to babble on like demented cockatoos.

The public are beginning to wake up to this. Those opposite get given their lines, they get given their fluorescent vests and they get given their hard hats. If they are prepared to stick to the script, the public will very quickly wake up to them. But those opposite know in their heart of hearts that for a Treasurer not to release the budget deficit figure during his speech is extraordinary. That sums it up very much for this Prime Minister and Treasurer. Of every Labor Prime Minister and Treasurer—and this is a big statement on Labor Party history—this duo is easily the most economically incompetent and irresponsible in our history.

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