John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting to look at what the member for McMahon's matter of public importance actually says. The government of which he was a minister, in various portfolios including Treasury and immigration, brought about the reason for our government's commitment to responsible economic management, which we have no choice about. We have to do it, because it had not been done around here for the previous six years.

The shadow Treasurer could be referred to as the tax-free threshold expert. The tax-free threshold, which he was unable to recall recently in a very public way, is not one that he had to reach back into time for. It was not a Howard government threshold; it was one put up by his own government—perhaps not when he was Treasurer, but not that long before it. For a budding Treasurer wanting to be reincarnated as that again, it was not a very big thing to remember. We have to question the memory of the opposition in general, because without doubt the reason we have to make cuts is not to hurt people; these cuts are not going to do anything except lower the cost of living for families. I think the memory loss that the member for McMahon and his colleagues have is that they left us with the situation we are in. They left a high cost of living and a huge debt, which has to be serviced. I remember how shocked the small business sector was at the 2010 election when we went around explaining that the Rudd-Gillard government was borrowing around $110 million a day just to service their borrowing and their spending. It was quite amazing.

I will take the member for Riverina up on one thing—he may be right, but I actually thought the member for Watson would have nearly challenged the member for McMahon as somebody who sent boats off into the sunset, because he was also the minister for immigration. I think it is prophetic that the minister for immigration who solved this issue when it first arose in around 2001 or 2002 is in the House with us today—the member for Berowra. He was the most successful immigration minister of all time. When this became a huge issue he solved it. Even with that lesson not very long before them, the member for McMahon and the member for Watson vied with one another to see who could cross Australia the most. I will not go into what was the cost of that, in more ways than one.

I thought it was very apt when the member for Watson became minister for immigration, because he was a refugee of the first order. Here is a member of the far Right in New South Wales. He is a protege, you could say, of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. He is a member of that same group, let us be honest about it. I think they must have known what was coming and said, 'Tony, you go down to federal parliament. Get out of New South Wales.' He was in the upper house in New South Wales in those days. They said, 'Tony, you go down and show the feds have a New South Wales Right runs things.' He did come down here. When you are trained by Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid there are a lot of things you know that the rest of us do not, and do not want to either, probably. I thought he was the right person to be the minister for immigration. Perhaps the member for Riverina is right when he says that the member for McMahon probably did spend more and did see more boats come in, but it was a close run thing. They were neck and neck. That was a mere $10 billion or $11 billion over budget.

Those guys know how to spend. It is a very easy, quite pleasant, thing to do. But in the history of Australia, nobody ever spent as much money, as quickly and with so little return as the Rudd-Gillard government. It is not easy to spend that much that quickly. (Time expired)

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