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

Absolutely dead wrong! The rating agencies, all three of them, that have given us a AAA-rating with a stable outlook all disagree with them. So the views of the ratings agencies apparently do not matter to the shadow Treasurer. That is pretty frightening, if he does not understand that—very frightening. He can go and find a report from a firm here or a firm there. But if you go through all of the judgements of the market economists that have been published in recent times, they give the budget a tick because it is good economics and it is good for the country.

Now, of course, we had the shadow Treasurer before, talking about the example of New Zealand. Well, there are just a couple of small differences between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand went into recession! New Zealand boosted the GST at the end of 2010. That is their dream! Jack up the GST!

See this speech in context