Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

A business plan was one suggestion. You can readily buy one off Amazon for a lot less than $50 billion, but there is only one thing that I would give the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy this year. It is a DVD copy of The Cable Guy. It was a 1996 film. That was a great year, not just for the production of The Cable Guy. On Rotten Tomatoes they describe the DVD as:

… a lonely and disturbed cable guy raised on television who just wants a new friend, but his target … rejects him.

The good thing about this gift is that you can buy it on eBay for 99c if you get in early. That could be a starting bid.

When it comes to Christmas cheer, the Labor Party will indulge. As they have done over the course of the last year, they will partake in their own indulgent dialogue where they will focus on whether Kevin was robbed or whether Julia deserved her position. Over the last 12 months it has been the coalition, under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition, that has shown formidable discipline and a formidable focus on the interests of everyday Australians. Everything we have done, everything we have said, every policy we have presented has been focused on the Australian people. We have done so with an unqualified commitment to improve the lot of the people, to give them more opportunity to put more money in their pockets, to give them more certainty and stability in an uncertain time. What we have done is present to the Australian people—at the election and beyond—policies that put in place, that lay down, a sustainable future for our nation. It goes back to the fundamentals of what Australians are going to go through this Christmas when they actively consider whether they have enough money to buy their children the sorts of presents their children want. How can it be like that in a prosperous nation, a nation in the most bountiful period arguably in its history? How can it be that so many Australians will wonder whether they can afford the desires and the aspirations of their children this Christmas?

It is because Australians are not confident under Labor leadership. They are not confident that tomorrow is going to be better than today. They are not confident that they can take a risk. They are worried about tomorrow’s bills. They are worried about how they are going to pay today’s bills. It is only the coalition that is prepared to do the hard yards. It is only the coalition that is prepared to state emphatically that we are focused on the Australian people, that we are focused on the family budgets, that the rules that apply to the family budget of not spending more than you have as income should be applied to the national budget as well. If you as a government do not make hard decisions now when you have the best terms of trade in 50 years, when you have unemployment of around five per cent, when you have inflation under three per cent and when you have economic growth above trend, you will never have the courage to make the hard decisions when they will be absolutely necessary.

If you want to look at what happens when you have not got the courage to make hard decisions, pick up a newspaper and look at what is happening in Ireland today, pick up a newspaper tomorrow and have a look at Portugal or Spain or get yesterday’s newspapers and have a look at what has happened in Greece, because the only reason Australia has any confidence today is that the coalition has done the hard yards in the past and, as of today and into the future, we will do the hard yards again for the Australian people. (Time expired)

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