Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

This government promised that all future surpluses—and there was your own promise—would go into the Future Fund. You have taken that money from the Future Fund. You have said that you are going to use the interest earned to spend on productive investment. We say that is a good thing; we believe in that principle.

Six or eight weeks ago when Labor proposed a national fibre-to-the-node network to build our productivity base—which according to the government’s own figures last night is impoverished—we were accused of economic vandalism. We had big stories about it. Now we have the Treasurer with his paws in the honeypot. Senator Minchin has spent the day wiping the honey off the Treasurer’s paws and the Treasurer has spent the day wiping the honey away from his mouth. Eight weeks ago this government said that it was economic vandalism to do exactly what it did last night. This government has not delivered a national high-speed broadband network. If you go through those budget papers you will find that again it has not faced up to that great challenge of climate change. It is smug and arrogant and it has not addressed the issues. There is nothing on clean coal innovation. There is nothing on an emissions trading scheme. There is nothing on renewable energy to encourage Australian made greenhouse technology. (Time expired)