Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

No, this is where you do not understand it and this is where you will be punished by the people in Queensland for playing politics with this: it is the sum of the parts that is important. All of these small amounts of money add up to a substantial amount of money that can rebuild our state. That is the case for this levy. Everybody is contributing. Everybody understands the size and magnitude of the task. If it was good enough to have a levy for Timor or for the gun buyback, why isn’t it good enough to have a levy to rebuild Queensland? They cannot answer that question and it exposes just how bizarre, out of touch and irresponsible each and every one of those members of the opposition is on this issue, particularly the members of the opposition from Queensland.

We are coming at this from the perspective of responsible economic management. We are a government that have got the big economic decisions right. Did you hear the shadow Treasurer go on and on earlier about how we handled the global recession? We absolutely got it right. If those opposite had had their way Australia would have been in recession. Unemployment would be far higher now and we would be in a much weaker position to deal with these natural disasters had they been in government during the global financial crisis.

I have just come from a meeting of G20 finance ministers. They understand how important the response of Australia was to growth in this country compared to what is going on in other developed economies. Go to the eurozone. Unemployment across the eurozone is 10 per cent. Unemployment in this country is five per cent. Part of the reason for that was the very quick response that we put in place to support small businesses, to support employment and to support confidence in our economy. The outcome has been a far stronger economy and one of the strongest developed economies in the Western world.

But of course all of this is opposed by those opposite, because they do not know how to behave when there are big challenges or when there is a crisis. They did not know how to behave during the global financial crisis. They came in here and hacked away at the bank guarantee; they came in here and opposed the second stimulus package. They did all those things because they could not live up to their responsibilities. They cannot live up to their responsibilities because they do not know how to behave in a crisis.

This was demonstrated yet again in their response to the floods in Queensland. They just decided to play politics from the very beginning. This government will deal with this in the way we must deal with it: we are going to deal with it in a responsible way. The responsible way is to put in place a levy which is modest but will fund, along with our savings, a package which will support the people of Queensland and the rest of the country. Paying as you go is the responsible thing to do. The irresponsible thing to do is what the opposition is doing.

With each and every one of us pulling our own weight, we will be back to surplus in a couple of years, we will be setting our economy up for the future, we will be doing the right thing by the people of Queensland, we will be making our economy stronger and we will be helping out all those people who need a helping hand. That is why a modest levy is the responsible thing to do. Those opposite will be condemned by their electorates for not behaving in a responsible way, which is what their electorates expect of them. (Time expired)

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