Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Competitiveness) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons for another policy question from the government side of the House. It is now 1,095 days since I had a question from the opposition, which is the time it took Ferdinand Magellan to circumnavigate the world.

This report, Australia in the Asian century, is a white paper that is very complex and very detailed and took an enormous amount of thought and effort. It sets out a plan for Australia and it has special relevance to regional Australia. It indicates the government's confidence that we can develop regional Australia in responsible ways to help make areas such as northern Australia a food bowl for Asia. That is our commitment. We have here in our midst the minister for regional development, who, on the back of this report, will be holding the Northern Australia Ministerial Forum this year in order to further develop and implement the policies that have been well thought out in this document.

Mr Robb interjecting—

I am being interjected upon, of course, by the shadow finance minister, who interjected earlier when it was suggested that he had 49 policies, fully costed, with nice covers, in his drawer. The first policy that made its way out was leaked because of the disaffection within his own policy unit about the crazy policies—the wacky policies—that the coalition has articulated in this leaked document. He said that they were fully costed with nice covers. Costed? This is an enormous potential cost running into tens of billions of dollars. That means infrastructure would be denied Western Sydney and the capital cities of this country. They are completely wacko ideas—and that is obviously the case in the view of members of the coalition policy team in order for this to have been ventilated in the way that it has.

We have in the Leader of the Opposition a policy lightweight. We have in the Leader of the Opposition someone who gives no attention to detail. He says he has policies; he only has slogans. Into this so-called policy, you put one part in from Gina Rinehart, one part in from Joh Bjelke-Petersen and one part in from Tony Abbott, stir it around and what have you got? Troppo Tony—Troppo Tony has developed here a completely wacky policy.

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