Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I seek to make some further remarks to address a couple of the issues raised in the debate. Firstly, I support the member for Port Adelaide on the last issue he raised about the capabilities of the South Australian defence industry to meet the government’s white paper desires. It is an industry which has been built up very strongly in recent years, with a lot of support from the former government. It has the bipartisan support of those of us in South Australia. It does a very good job. We hope very much that this government is able to ensure that the work conducted in relation to building more defence assets is done through that industry in South Australia. It would benefit the member for Port Adelaide very much, of course.

In this debate we heard from the last couple of speakers on the other side about the supposed great bars of gold raining down on the previous Australian government and that the previous Prime Minister and Treasurer did not have a very difficult task at all—that they had an amazing run of gold rush and so forth—which of course is simply not true. It was good management—dedicated and strong economic management—which led to surplus budgets and low unemployment. I will not hold up the Main Committee’s time and, on that note, will conclude my very brief remarks.

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