Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Dear, oh dear. It is very difficult following this duo over here, the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister, who contradicted each other from the mover and seconder of this motion. We had a little showpiece from Joe. It would have been better if he had the tutu and the wand. But he stood up here and he had is own little fantasy. What we have here is motion to suspend standing orders. That is what is before this House right now. And in spite of the fact that the shadow Treasurer did not mention the need for a suspension of standing orders, we let that go through to the keeper—because we are generous people on this side of the House, and we thought we'd give him a go—it is a fact that, if these standing orders are suspended, you'll knock over the matter of public importance, and the matter of public importance is from the member for North Sydney on the same topic that he has moved the suspension of standing orders on! So when this suspension is knocked over, because it does not get an absolute majority, he will have to stand up and give the same speech! It is absolutely, extraordinarily incompetent for a tactics committee that decides in advance to have typed out suspensions of standing orders to not give consideration to what comes next—to what it knocks off if the suspension is carried. What an absolute farce.

The member for North Sydney raised Laurie Oakes. I am pleased he did raise Laurie Oakes, because Laurie Oakes wrote a cracker of an article on Saturday, where he fingered the shadow Treasurer for his incompetence: 'Voters entitled to a bit more honesty', is what Laurie Oakes had to say. And he said:

The policy bigwigs who heard Joe Hockey's provocative speech to the Institute of Economic Affairs in London back in April could hardly help but be impressed. He spoke about the age of entitlement being over.

That is what he had to say in London. But this is what Laurie Oakes says about Joe Hockey back on home turf:

If Hockey was fair dinkum about what he said in London he would have welcomed the Baby Bonus and Health Insurance Rebate savings. Instead, like Abbott, he saw an opportunity to score political points and grabbed it.

And that is all that we see from those opposite. Every single day is just about the politics of the day, let alone the politics of the month or the year or the term in parliament; it is all about the politics of the day. And that is why this motion should be knocked off, and there should not be a suspension of standing orders, because this is pure indulgence from those opposite. They say they are worried about the age of entitlement—according to the shadow Treasurer—but back here say the opposite.

It is just like the Leader of the Opposition who, when he is here, says the economy is crumbling and there is crisis—the carbon price was going to ruin the economy. But when he goes overseas, he talks the economy up and has to acknowledge how well this government's economic management is. And let us have a look at how good it is compared with the Howard era: unemployment, lower under Labor; inflation, lower under Labor; home loan mortgage rates, lower under Labor; wages growth, higher under Labor; household savings, higher under Labor; taxes as a percentage of GDP, lower under Labor; government spending, lower under Labor; business investment, higher under Labor; the investment pipeline, through the roof under Labor, with the confidence in this economy; infrastructure spending, higher under Labor; industrial disputes, lower under Labor; labour force participation, higher under Labor—on every single economic indicator, this government has outperformed the former government.

I noticed the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, in an op-ed piece in the Australian Financial Review, speaking about his vision for the future. And what did he have to say? 'If you want to look at the direction for the future, you've got to look in the past'. That is the problem with this bloke and those opposite. Not only are they incapable of embracing the future; they are incapable of acknowledging the present, because they are stuck in the past, they have been engage in an unrelenting dummy-spit since they failed to form government in 2010.

And then they have the hide to speak about budget surpluses and deficits. Well, they can get fair dinkum: they can vote for our savings. They have got all these unfunded promises. They have not even bothered to look at the detail in MYEFO. Let us have a look at what the shadow Treasurer has had to say. He said the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was not in MYEFO—wrong, wrong, wrong. He said terms of trade are at a record high—wrong. Then he went on to say:

… you have trend growth of 3 to 3.5 per cent on their projections, which I think is a little generous …

Wrong. If he had bothered to read MYEFO, he would know what GDP growth is forecast to be. The fact is that those opposite have absolutely no credibility when it comes to the economic debate of this country. The Leader of the Opposition, when it came to their budget black hole, had this to say, when he was asked about it:

… it is absolutely fanciful.

And yet, just a couple of weeks later, the shadow finance minister, when asked about it on Meet the Press on 4 September, said:

No, it's not a furphy.

Then we had the shadow Treasurer say to Fran Kelly on Radio National, on 11 May:

… we've already outlined that; $50 billion worth of cuts …

Then when he got asked on Sky News Australian Agenda:

What's the quantum of savings that you've got so far?

His answer was:

I'm not going to tell you …

It's a little secret! Well, we know about their costings at the last election—bodgied up, and the people that they got to do the mates' rates costings got pinged for it.

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