Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, imagine someone who calls themselves an economic conservative, someone who comes to government on the basis that they've promised they'll be prudent, responsible and keep the budget in balance. And then imagine that the first chance they get, rather than delivering on their plan of being prudent and responsible, they tear it up and embrace the opportunity to spend, spend, spend and take no responsibility. Let's imagine somebody like that. You'd have to say they're either a hypocrite or a fraud, or both.

But then sometimes they go even further and they invent their own economic concepts in the process. You may have heard, Deputy Speaker, of the broken window fallacy. Well, there are Labor Party members who believe in the 'burning down the house fallacy', because what they did when they were previously in government, when they came to government on the basis that they were economic conservatives, was go down a pathway of spending recklessly, tearing down school halls and rebuilding school halls to generate economic activity. They literally invested in burning down the houses of Australians as a pathway to show that they were, allegedly, economically conservative.

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