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

Thank you, Speaker. I was just pointing out that in the Liberal Party's world there is no level of responsible debt. Their approach to our current situation is that they would take an axe to health and education and an axe to jobs in our economy. Just because the global economy has taken an axe to our budget, that does not mean to say that we should take an axe to jobs and health and education in this economy. That is clearly what they would do, and that is the approach that they advocated during the global financial crisis. They said that we should not have a responsible level of debt to support jobs and growth in our economy and they would have seen this economy go into recession. They would not have had the guts to do what we did when we were faced with that set of circumstances.

We have been faced with a new set of circumstances and we have responded in a responsible way. We responded in this way because we on this side of the House understand how important employment and job security is to all Australians wherever they live. Those on that side of the House are just playing from the playbook of the Tea Party in the United States. There is no level of responsible debt in the views of those people. In the views of those extremists and some people over there, there is no level of responsible debt and therefore when you hit a bump in the economy, when something happens globally, you do not do anything to support your economy. You take an axe to it.

That is something this government will never do. Everyone over here is really proud of what we are doing to support jobs and growth. Those opposite would do directly the opposite. They would slash and cut and burn and follow the Campbell Newman approach and cut jobs right across our economy. That is not the Australian way.

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