Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I am. I am absolutely aware of it. The member ought to be aware that it takes months for spot prices to flow through to MRRT revenues. It is not the case that you have a spot price on one day and it is reflected in the MRRT revenues the next, as the member has sought to imply. That is just factually incorrect and yet another example of the extent to which all those opposite will go to misrepresent the basic facts, not just of revenue in the case of the MRRT but the basic facts about our economy.

One of the reasons we are seeing so much bitterness, so much aggression, from those opposite about these questions of modelling, about these questions of forecasts and about these questions of revenue is that they are still smarting from the fact that two years ago they were sprung—they were sprung by our forecasters; they were sprung by our advisers—with an $11 billion hole in their election package which they had deliberately tried to hide from the Australian people right through the whole election campaign. That is why we have seen in this House, and particularly from the shadow Treasurer, a constant campaign against the advisers. They are carrying on as if somehow all these forecasts have been done by the government—nothing to do with our advisers, nothing to do with the fact that we are advised by the same professional public servants that they were advised by.

The truth is that we have been through one of the most volatile periods in the Australian economy and in the global economy in over 80 years. For political purposes those opposite seek to deny that. They seek to deny the global financial crisis. They seek to deny that there was an $11 billion hole in their election costings—the biggest bungle in Australian political history when it comes to election costings. That is why they are so embarrassed, and that is why they are conducting these sorts of campaigns about the forecasts which are provided in a responsible way to this government. It is also why they are so embarrassed about the fact that this government has been prepared to make the big calls on the economy.

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