Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Why, Member for Wakefield, would you ask that question? I am not making this stuff up. Just go to the Consumer Confidence Index, a document that has been keeping a record of confidence levels since before the Great Depression. I can assure you that we are an all-time record low since that index has been kept. But do not take my word for it, go and look it up for yourself. We only need to look at the words of the Treasurer, when things he says just do not get followed through or things that he says are a misrepresentation. Take, for example, on 12 August on 7:30 when the Treasury was asked about the carbon tax and this was his response: 'We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.' There is no other way that you can interpret that. On 15 August on Meet the Pressa Channel 10 journalist asked the Treasurer: 'Can you tell us exactly when will Labor put a price on carbon?' Wayne Swan's response was: 'Well, certainly we reject this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax, we reject that.'

Let us take a look at another comedy of errors the Treasurer has participated in. Labor has not delivered on jobs. The Treasurer promised that this budget was all about jobs:

Well, it is jobs, jobs and jobs. It's a bigger and better trained workforce.

That was what Wayne Swan said at the press conference in the budget lock-up on 10 May. He went on to say it was in fact half a million new jobs:

We will see the creation of an additional 500,000 jobs in the next couple of years.

That was in Wayne Swan's interview with Hugh Riminton on Meet the Press on the Ten Network in May 2011.

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