Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I like the member for Moncrieff, and I have a healthy respect for his ability and capacity. I really cannot understand why he is not serving on the front bench, representing his party, but I am sure his time will come. But when we come to speak on the budget we come largely to speak about our local communities, and I have never heard such rubbish from him. I cannot believe the dissertation I have just heard from the member for Moncrieff. He represents a thriving tourism area. Where would it be now if Australia were in recession? How would the member for Moncrieff's electorate now be faring if, like Europe in particular, we were now in recession as a country?

As we speak today, in every corner of Europe they are wondering what they will do next about their economic situation. The eurozone is falling apart and they are wondering how they get growth back into their local economies, and they wonder how they are going to deal with the debt crisis of southern Europe. Meanwhile, back in Australia, of course, we still enjoy healthy growth. We managed to avoid recession, one of the only Western democracies to do so, and of course that has left us with a little bit of debt. The member for Moncrieff's alternative was not to spend that money and allow Australia to sink into a deep recession. All those things he was just talking about, which are no doubt worthy projects in his electorate, would not be funded today, because government revenues would have fallen considerably as the economy went into negative, and government outlays would have risen considerably as people joined the unemployment queues. Unemployment now in the Hunter region is at 3.9 per cent. In my electorate it is 3½ per cent. That would not be the case—

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