Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff is a serial interjector in this debate. I will be fascinated to know whether the member for Moncrieff, the shadow small business minister, will make a contribution to this debate which has been initiated by the shadow Assistant Treasurer. The matter of public importance actually refers to the impact on families and small businesses. I look forward to the contribution of the member for Moncrieff. The Gold Coast is small business central. If ever there was a place that was reliant on small businesses and their success it is the Gold Coast, yet this is the man who fell like a stone, who plummeted like a stone, down to 93 and who fell out of the top 100 with the member for Forde rating well above him. He is joined, of course, by the member for Dickson, who went scurrying back to Dickson when he was knocked over by Karen Andrews. That is where the poster boy was framed because the member for McPherson said: ‘Come in spinner. Come down to the Gold Coast; I’ll secure the seat for you.’ Of course, the member for McPherson went on holidays. He made no phone calls, he missed out, he got framed and now he is back in Dickson saying, ‘The real reason I went back to Dickson is that I got 400 emails saying “Please come back to Dickson.”‘ Give us a break. I predict—there is a very good chance—the shadow small business minister will make no contribution to this debate today, but we will see. He still has time to make a contribution. But the fact is that this is an opportunistic opposition. They put their personal interests, their self-interests, ahead of the interests of working families and ahead of the interests of the small businesses of this country. On debt and deficit, they are doing nothing more than running a dishonest scare campaign. Australia has the lowest debt and the lowest deficit of any country in the advanced world.

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