Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Why is it important that the government’s economic security strategy receive broad support? Is the minister aware of any comments which seek to undermine the strategy?

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is facing very powerful downward pressures on our economy from the global financial crisis and the knock-on consequences that are beginning to ripple through the global economy, and Australia is not immune from the influences that are emerging from this trend. The government has taken decisive action in response to these developments to push back against those downward pressures on the Australian economy, particularly by injecting a $10 billion economic security strategy stimulus into economic activity but also by guaranteeing bank deposits and guaranteeing wholesale lending to Australian banks and financial institutions in order to ensure that their activity can continue, and these are of course added to the stimulatory impact that is already beginning to flow from interest rate reductions by the Reserve Bank and the decline in the value of the Australian dollar. The impact of these things of course does not flow instantaneously but it does gradually move throughout the economy.

It is vital that this strategy does receive broad support from within the community and it is important that people do not talk down the Australian economy. I note with some interest that the opposition appears to be trying to have it both ways on this issue. It wants to have people believe that it supports the government’s economic security strategy and it wants to have people believe that it supports the payments that are being made to pensioners, to carers and to families as part of that strategy; yet, at the same time, it wants to unpick that strategy and it wants to convince Australians that that strategy is actually bad economic policy. It wants to walk both sides of the street. It wants to both support the package and attack it at the same time.

In the opposition leader’s address to the nation, he made the following statements:

With the benefit of hindsight, government should have acted a lot earlier.

And:

… Mr Rudd’s government missed the warning signs at the beginning of the year—

about the global financial crisis. This statement stands in stark contrast to earlier statements, only very recent, by the Leader of the Opposition. On 30 September he said:

There is nobody—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I stand again on relevance in answering the question. The question did not ask for a commentary on the past statements of the Leader of the Opposition and unless these people can get their question right, they should—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will resume his seat. The question went on to talk about comments undermining the strategy. I call the minister.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 30 September the opposition leader said:

There is nobody that would have predicted these events a year ago or even a few months ago.

The following day, on 1 October, he said:

… events of the last few weeks would not have been predicted a few months ago.

So the position that the opposition leader is taking with respect to the government’s approach to the global financial crisis is that the government could not have known but it should have known. That is the net effect of his position—walking both sides of the street, saying that nobody could have known yet the government should have known. The opposition leader has in effect created a new category of soothsayer. Some people think they can see into the future. Well, he has gone one better: he can see into the past—absolutely sensational!

If I were the Leader of the Opposition, I would not focus too heavily on the past because, for example, he might discover that the government of which he was an integral player was advised no fewer than seven times over the course of the past seven years that it should consider enacting some kind of protection, some kind of insurance, for depositors in Australian banks and financial institutions. This advice came from, amongst others, the Financial Stability Forum, APRA, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the International Monetary Fund and the Council of Financial Regulators. So, if we were to look into the past, as the opposition leader seems to suggest, we might find that his recent posturing, his recent suggestion that the government was not doing enough to protect deposits in Australian banks, stands in stark contrast to the actions of his own government when confronted on numerous occasions by the key regulators in our economy with the proposal that something should be done on this and that nothing was indeed done by a government that he was an integral part of.

In conclusion, the opposition’s approach to dealing with the government’s economic security strategy is straightforward. It wants to be all things to all people. It wants to walk both sides of the street. It wants to make it up on the spot to support the individual payments, because it knows that they are well received in the community, but to undermine the overall strategy being put forward by of the government. It does not care. The Leader of the Opposition does not care whether what he says today is the direct opposite of what he said yesterday.

People in this country want clear, responsible, sound and consistent economic management and if you cannot deliver clear, responsible, sound and consistent economic policy in opposition, they will judge that you are not capable of delivering clear, sound and consistent management in government.