Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

He probably missed it, Mr Speaker. He probably missed the fact that Japan’s economy shrunk by a massive four per cent, the worst performance since records began in 1955. The UK contracted by 1.9 per cent, its worst performance since 1979. Germany contracted by 3.8 per cent, its worst since 1970. Of course the US contracted by 1.5 per cent, France by 1.2 per cent and Italy by 2.4 per cent. Somehow those opposite want to pretend that this country is completely immune from those events. They want to pretend that there is no impact in this country at all. We understand the importance of that, which is why we have put in place the first phase of our economic stimulus with cash payments to households. It is why we have put in place shovel-ready projects investing in homes and schools.

Whatever the outcome on Wednesday there are two things that we know for sure. The first one is that things would be much worse if we did not act to stimulate the economy and the second one is that those opposite were wrong—absolutely wrong—to vote against the measures to support jobs in this House. Of course we have seen the Leader of the Opposition all over the television in the last 24 hours talking the economy down. We heard no mention of a global recession, not one mention of the challenges imposed on us by the world and no mention of nation building for recovery. All we got from the Leader of the Opposition was complete opportunism, because he has one big priority: it is for the economy to fail so that he can succeed. That is how negative he has become. Usually leaders of the opposition are called alternative prime ministers but not so with this one because he has no alternative policy whatsoever, none whatsoever, and the negative approach we have had from those opposite demonstrates how unqualified they are to deal with this situation. We will go on with cushioning our economy from this global recession and supporting employment, and those opposite are only going to be negative.

See this speech in context