Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to the Treasurer’s last answer on prudent economic and financial management. I also refer to the Treasurer’s complaints in a recently published book that the Prime Minister ‘was a failure as Treasurer in the early 1980s’ and ‘has caused the government to seriously overspend to buy elections’. Has the Treasurer sat down with the Prime Minister—perhaps over dinner at Kirribilli—to discuss the substance of these allegations?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have lived through the best of times and the worst of times, as William Shakespeare once wrote.

Opposition Member:

It was Dickens.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, I am sorry, it was Charles Dickens. I thought he wrote ‘now is the winter of our discontent’. I am reminded to quote the member for Lilley—I am reminded of that famous Australian poet, Banjo Paterson, was it not, who wrote those immortal words: ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi!’ This is someone who would not know his Shakespeare from his Dickens or his Paterson from his soccer chants. He purports to want to become the Treasurer of Australia. All I can say is: some mothers do ’ave ’em.