Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, very much, Mr Speaker. I am relating my response very directly to what the member for Mackellar asked. The member for Mackellar should note that in order to act as the leadership of this nation you have to be able to make the tough decisions to keep the economy strong. We have done that in the recent budget. The Treasurer did that, leading the economic team to deliver the budget back to surplus. If anybody in the opposition—anybody—has a plan to return the budget to surplus we have not seen it yet. In the greatest display of economic incompetence that this parliament has ever had to witness, we have seen no budget reply from any member of the opposition.

At the core of the budget are jobs and opportunity. We know that the opposition do not care about jobs. They would have got all the big decisions to support Australian jobs wrong. That is what the budget is about. And it is about opportunity. We know that the opposition do not care anything about opportunity. In government their track record on spreading opportunity was woeful and in opposition all they stand for is cuts to education, apprenticeships, schools and universities—you name it, they want to cut it.

We will keep pursuing this vision. I will do it; the Deputy Prime Minister will do it. Of course we will seek advice from those who have served the Australian nation well. I would have thought, if there were a modicum of interest in the nation's future from those opposite, they would be happy to see that someone of the capacity of Ken Henry was still available for public service in the interests of the nation. But cheap politics is all they know.

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