Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

There you go—we know what return on investment looks like. Return on investment comes about by doing the hard yards; by having a government that can accommodate investment and risk and that does not look at someone who is profitable and say, 'I want that,' which is what Labor does. Labor does not ever witness a profit that it does not want to take off a hardworking employer or a hardworking employee.

As the Deputy Prime Minister said, 'we want to have a strong manufacturing industry in Australia'. But we have inherited an economy where one job in manufacturing was lost every 19 minutes under Labor. Under Labor, Ford closed their doors and Mitsubishi closed their doors. How about that? Talk about return on investment! That is what you judge to be a good return on investment, is it? Labor's answer to everything is just to throw more money at it. Their response is always to put their political interests ahead of the commercial interests of individual companies.

So I would say to the Leader of the Opposition: put Australia first, put the workers first and join with the Acting Prime Minister and the government in calling on Holden to come clean with the Australian people about their intentions here. We want them to be honest about it—we want them to be fair dinkum—because, if I was running a business and I was committed to that business in Australia, I would not be saying that I have not made any decision about Australia. Either you are here or you are not.

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