David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer ) Share this | Hansard source

They hide behind the myth of the Howard government. They wheel out John Howard at every opportunity to give them some credibility on economic policy, because the Leader of the Opposition, whose former employer said he was an economic illiterate, is bored by economics. That is what the member for Higgins' former employer said. So what they do is they wheel out John Howard, but John Howard was out there and he was speaking the truth. He was talking about the strength of the Australian economy. He also said:

We are still fortunate that we have an unemployment rate with a five in front of it.

When the member for North Sydney is out there talking the Australian economy down, he should remember that we have an unemployment rate with a five in front of it. He goes on and he says:

I wouldn’t have thought that was going to be possible a couple of years ago—

this is from John Howard.

I wouldn't have thought that was possible—

I tell you what: under a Labor government, it has been delivered. He goes on:

… and I do not think many people would have.

He went on to say:

And our debt to GDP ratio, the amount of money we owe to the strength of our economy, is still a lot better than most other countries.

There you have it. Every time those characters come into this place and jump up and start talking about debt and deficit, the words of John Howard should be ringing in their ears. For all of the fraudulence that they come forward with, there is an utterance of truth that comes from the Liberal Party spoken by their elder statesman John Howard.

They are the facts: an economy that is 14 per cent larger than it was before the GFC, unmatched by any advanced economy, and an unemployment rate of 5.5 per cent. We have delivered 960,000 jobs in our economy. We have a record pipeline of investment coming into this country, and it continues to be the case. We have contained inflation. Families are paying less on their interest rates than they paid before.

Those opposite went to an election—we all remember it well; the member for Casey has a pretty poor memory but he might want to go back and have a look—and they said: 'Interest rates will always be lower under the Liberal Party.' Now, all of a sudden, low interest rates are something to lament. The families that I represent, the families that the people on this side of the chamber represent and small businesses like low interest rates. For someone with a mortgage of $300,000, they are paying $5,500 less in repayments every year. That is in their pocket.

It is true, as the member for North Sydney said, people are saving more. That of itself is not such a bad thing. That is about having a little bit more sustainability in the way we conduct ourselves. Go and have a look at the Parliamentary Budget Office's review and the Treasury's review of the structural position of the budget and you will see that they point to the fact that some of the excesses built into the system back in the days of the Howard and Costello governments—no doubt some of the poor policy decisions that the member for Higgins advised her boss about—were put in place and have ensured the structural position of the budget was not as sound as it could have been. We have been making some massive moves to improve that, and that has been recognised by the PBO and by the Treasury. They go quiet when you talk about the PBO because—

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