Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There was a very interesting moment in the recent UK general election that occurred on 30 April 2015. It was on a television program called Question Time, which I understand has a large viewership over there. Ed Miliband, the then leader of the Labor Party and seeking at that point to become Prime Minister, was asked a question by an audience member. The question was a very simple and straight forward question: do you accept that when Labor was in government it overspent? It was a very good, simple, crisp and straightforward question and it was a question that, to Mr Miliband's credit, he answered in equally crisp, simple and clear terms. He simply said, 'No'. Many of the commentators during the UK election saw this as a completely pivotal moment in the election because what Mr Miliband was in effect doing was defending the completely indefensible. There was not a rational person who did not consider that when Labor was previously in government the UK had spent too much money. So he was either acting irrationally, which does not bode well for a potential prime minister, or he actually believed that Labor was somehow blameless in the debt and deficit situation that was inherited in the UK. He dodged the question when it was re-asked a couple of times. At the end, the same fellow who put the question simply said to him, 'If I get to the end of the week and I cannot afford to buy a pint then I have overspent.' This was a completely pivotal moment. What I find absolutely fascinating about members opposite is that their rhetoric is around two major complaints: they simultaneously complain against almost every item of expenditure restraint that this government engages in—

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