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

Let us just acknowledge, for a start, that we have the lowest deficit and the lowest debt of any advanced country, and you are going around with a dishonest scare campaign. What we need to know from the opposition is whether they support any stimulus and whether they ever supported any stimulus. Of course, Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, said at the outset that the cash payments in December of last year were ‘right’ and he was ‘not going to quibble about them’. The next day he started the quibbling, he started condemning them and he said, ‘This is a cash splash; this is a waste of money.’ But, when the retail sales figures came in showing that we had the strongest retail sales of any country in the developed world, he started to change his tune. Indeed, small business retail sales grew more strongly than the average overall. So the cash payments were very good for small business.

Then the opposition leader changed his tune and said, ‘This is not going to create one job.’ First it was about right, then he said it was too much and then he said it was ineffective. Now they are again saying that it is too much. They are all over the place on this. They do their internal polling to see if they can strike some sort of chord with the Australian people. There is no consistency. They will never strike a chord with the Australian people when they put their self-interest first ahead of the national interest and ahead of the interests of working Australians and small businesses in this country.

Let us have a quick look at the coalition economic team, which has every possible position on an economic argument, depending on the opportunity of the moment. The chief opportunist, the opposition leader, puts his own self-interest before the national interest and shows exceptionally poor judgment. Just go to the fake email affair and you will understand what poor judgment he has. How could you entrust economic policy to the Leader of the Opposition? Then there is the shadow Treasurer, who said that jobs are not his top priority. They were running around saying, ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs: that is what we are really concerned about.’ Then at the first opportunity to change tack, the shadow Treasurer said, ‘No, jobs are not my top priority.’ There is no consistency from the shadow Treasurer at all. Instead of focusing on supporting the jobs of Australian workers during the global recession, he was more interested in focusing on his own job. He said on ABC radio in Melbourne, ‘The jobs we have to focus on—

See this speech in context