Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

but, unfortunately, she did not get a rock star; she got a politician—quite a step down! If you had heard me play guitar, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would have known that I was never going to be a rock star; I was only ever going to be something at quite a level down, and that might just be a politician.

If we all look at the budget from 2013, where they put forward the proportion of money that they claimed to have put aside to fund education, we see that they did not put the money aside. So it is easy to say it is a cut, but it is not a cut if you do not put the money on the table.

The disturbing part to me is that those opposite, at this instance, think that they are ready to take on government again and that they are ready to take on the Treasury and to manage the books of Australia. I think the lesson that everyone should get out of that last half hour is: they are not ready—not yet. And the reason they are not ready is that they have not worked out that, before you spend money, you have first got to put the money aside. Before you can deliver a project, you have got to explain to the Australian people how you are going to fund it.

In half an hour there was a great opportunity for the Australian Labor Party, who want to be the next government, to explain to the Australian people how they are going to fund it. Anyone can say, 'I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that,' but unless Labor can explain to me how they are going to fund it, it is an empty promise, just like my wife might have thought I was going to be a rock star. Once she heard me play on my guitar she realised it was indeed an empty promise.

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