Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's nice to see that order has been restored to the House. It's genuinely nice to have an opportunity to have a debate in this parliament. Since the election in May last year we have been shut down so many times by those opposite that those of us who are new have had very few opportunities to debate matters of great consequence to the nation, such as the economy. So thanks—thanks for your sympathy, thanks for your compassion and thanks for giving us this opportunity. You normally act like a bunch of schoolchildren in this chamber, specifically schoolboys. You on that side of the chamber are like schoolboys who have a weird obsession with stripy ties, like schoolboys who thump the table when someone makes a particularly petty point—that seems to go down very well over there—and like schoolboys who, despite the fact that they clearly all did it in high school, missed the opportunity to have a proper private school debate. So that's what they do and what they give us instead.

It's such a pleasure to give these schoolboys their report card on the economy. I know they take great exception to our opinion, so I won't put that on them. What I will do is give them the opinions of the experts in our country. The renowned bastion of socialism the Ai Group said, 'We can see that from well before the onset of the devastating bushfires the Australian economy has been slowing.' Those rampaging communists Deloitte said back in October 2019, 'The pain in our economy has been home-grown.' EY, those barefoot vegans, said, 'The economy is losing momentum quite quickly.' PwC said, 'The imperative for additional stimulation of the economy remains.' Finally BCA, the workers' friends, said, 'We need to pull all the levers if we really want to get a sustained rise in investment to lock in future productivity growth and income growth.' That's your report card. That is the national report card on how you've been managing the books for seven very long years.

Let me tell you about the experience of people in my electorate of Lilley. In just the past few months, under your watch—which you boast about for 90 minutes every single day you come here—Lockheed Martin has completely shut down operations in Pinkenba, the corporate office of Virgin Australia in inner-northern Brisbane has cut 750 jobs and Arnott's, the iconic Australian company that provides us all with biscuits that we love, has been sold to a US private equity giant.

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