Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Given some of the contributions that have been made in this debate today, it must be really lovely to be a Liberal and to live in that beautiful parallel universe that members of the Liberal Party and the National Party seem to inhabit—a universe in which there was apparently no global financial crisis; a happy place. The fact that the global financial crisis happened in our reality seems to have completely passed them by. If you listen to the justifications for the newest, fresh attack on pensioners, you will hear everyone on that side of the House pointing their fingers over here and saying, 'It's all Labor's fault that we have to attack pensioners. It's all Labor's fault that we have to do this sneaky, dodgy deal with the Greens, where we pull the wool over poor old Richard Di Natale's eyes to convince him that he's got a deal that he doesn't really have,' to get them to back him on this deal that is going to hit pensioners' incomes. It is going to affect pensioners significantly and adversely. Why? Apparently, their excuse for wanting to attack pensioners this time around is Labor.

There is all this carry-on about Labor. During the global financial crisis, thank God the Labor Party was in power in this country. I am pleased that the Liberal Party saw fit to at least support some of the stimulus at the very beginning, but, if not for Labor being in power, would we have saved the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were saved through the stimulus that Labor introduced? Would we have come out of the global financial crisis with a AAA credit rating? No, we would not. Would we have come out of the global financial crisis as the 12th largest economy in the world? No, we would not, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, because your mob would be doing what they are doing right now: trying to find austerity excuses and attacking pensioners.

We certainly came out of the global financial crisis in much better shape under Labor than we would have had the coalition been in power. If you want an example of that, just look at unemployment. What has happened to unemployment is an absolute disgrace in this country since you people came into government.

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