Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

As I said, those opposite are focusing on book reviews. I hope they read the review by Mr Paul Cleary in last week’s Financial Review on the fiscal irresponsibility and fiscal recklessness over the last three years of the former Liberal government. He said:

The result of this outbreak of bad policy in the last years of the Howard government is likely to be a long period of inflation and weak economic growth, and it may take some considerable time, and pain, to get the balance back in the right order.

And this is without taking into account the impact at that time of the global credit crunch that the world economies, including that of Australia, faced. We had a legacy left to us by the former Liberal government: reckless spending; inflation at a 16-year high; 10 interest rate rises in a row; Senator Minchin, the then Minister for Finance and Administration, missing on the job—