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

I am delighted that the member for North Sydney has dragged himself away from his twittering for a few moments. We know he has got an attention span problem, but it would be good if he actually paid attention to the parliament rather than sitting there twittering all day. We should ask the opposition: when they were in government why was it that they inherited productivity running on average, over five years, at above three per cent and when they left government the figure was one per cent? Why on their watch did Australia slip way behind most of the developed world on broadband? Why under their stewardship was Australia the only developed nation in the world where public investment in higher education went backwards? Why over their time in office was no effort made to get uniform national regulatory arrangements in occupational health and safety, in trade licences, in consumer laws and all those other areas where they did absolutely nothing? We know the answer to these questions. The answer is that they have learnt nothing from their time in office. The government is committed to that holy grail of productivity improvement, to fixing productivity in this country, and that is what all of our economic efforts are directed to.

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