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

Mr Speaker, that question just demonstrated why they refused last year to adhere to the Charter of Budget Honesty. Of course, last year we found, when all of their commitments were finally examined by the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation, that there was an $11 billion hole in their savings. What they demonstrated there was gross incompetence, yet again.

The member knows full well that this is an investment with a return and therefore we are perfectly entitled to account for this the way we have—and, indeed, we have accounted for it in full in the budget. It is all there for everybody to see—the nature of this investment and the size of this investment—and we do not apologise for it for one moment, because this is a critical piece of nation-building investment which will lift the productivity of our economy. It will be of particular benefit to those in regional areas. It will lower the cost of doing business. It will connect regional Australia—places like Mackay, Townsville and Gladstone—not just to the national economy but to the international economy, so there is a very strong case in economic terms for the investment that we are making.

We should never forget that our investment in NBN is a very substantial microeconomic reform, a microeconomic reform that those opposite were not capable of implementing during their 12 long years of being in government and ignoring the problems. We had the guts to face up to structural separation, to make these decisions in the interests of the Australian people and to make the investments for the long term. I am not surprised you do not get it on the NBN, just like you did not get it in the middle of the global recession.

See this speech in context