Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister’s previous answers to my questions today and to his press conference on 12 October where he said in relation to the bank deposit guarantees:

The measures I’ve announced today are based on the advice of Australia’s economic regulators. The measures I’ve announced today have been the product of extensive deliberation between myself, the Treasurer and other Ministers who are members of the Strategic Policy and Budget Committee of the Cabinet.

Given the Minister for Finance and Deregulation is a member of that committee in his own right and given he was acting Treasurer over that weekend, how does the Prime Minister reconcile his statement and his answers today with the finance minister’s repeated comments this morning on Sky News Agenda that he was ‘not aware of the specific advice that is supposed to have been given to us by the RBA governor’?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, the Leader of the Opposition should acquaint himself with an ancient proposition called truth. I know that is something which is increasingly foreign to his vocabulary and foreign to his behaviour. The minister for finance this morning was referring to the absence of advice before the committee that there was anything wrong with this course of action, and it is absolutely clear-cut from his statements that that is the case. Those opposite again are clutching at straws, hyperventilating on this particular matter, when out there in mainstream Australia people are dealing with the challenges of financial stability, dealing with the challenges of what happens with their mortgages, dealing with the challenges of what happens with employment and jobs. All we have from the alternative government here is an exercise in short-term partisan politics. I would say to those opposite they should get real with the economic interests of this country, get behind the government’s package of support for the economy, not by half measures but by full measures, and get behind the proper measures taken by this government in response to the advice of the regulators on this guarantee and the guarantee for wholesale term funding arrangements for the banks necessary to maintain financial stability in this country. And I would say to the Leader of the Opposition: that is the deepest and most fundamental concern of every household in Australia.