Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

Next we will have the shadow Treasurer quoting a speech from Al Gore saying that climate change is not real or we might have him quoting that famous speech from Mahatma Gandhi saying that peaceful protest is not all it is cracked up to be! Given the OECD’s endorsement of this government’s policies, I am surprised that he has not alleged that OECD stands for the organisation of eccentric communist dictators. That is what you would expect from the shadow Treasurer.

The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer have been wandering around like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, trying to find evidence to support their fantasies that the stimulus is not working and should be withdrawn. But in political discourse in Australia you just cannot make things up; you have to have some evidence. The shadow Treasurer, as he said, stood twice yesterday in the House to take a personal explanation. He should come back into the House today and take another one and explain why he has not yet come clean about misleading the Australian people and misleading the House about the Prime Minister of Britain. His attempt to mitigate this deception is based around where the quotation marks were placed in his remarks. That is his defence—the old ‘quotation marks’ defence. What he ignores is the fact that the very fibre of the Prime Minister of Great Britain’s speech was to defend economic stimulus. At least when the former shadow Treasurer plagiarised a speech she got the quotes right. This one cannot even get that.

The shadow Treasurer should come back into the chamber this afternoon after question time and take another personal explanation. He should explain whether he was being dishonest or just plain sloppy.

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