Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must say that listening to Senator Fifield would make you think that the previous government was the greatest thing that ever happened in Australia. Unfortunately for you, the Australian public did not agree with your analysis. You are over there on the backbench where you deserve to be: in opposition. That is where you are as a result of all of the weak arguments that you put up against this government, which is trying to reverse the problems in the economy that you and your previous boss created.

The motion asks the Senate to condemn the government for its management of the Australian economy. That is a bit rich coming from the mates of the Maserati drivers over there; the mates of the big end of town; the mates who simply want to let big business do their own thing; the mates who want to let big business ride roughshod over the workers of this country. The only parties that deserve condemnation in this chamber are the parties sitting over there, the Liberals and the Nationals. They are the ones that mismanaged the economy; they are the ones that lost opportunities for over a decade. The Liberals and Nationals are the budget wreckers, not an economically responsible opposition.

Here we are with an international financial crisis and what do you want to do? You want to stop this government taking the actions that are necessary in both the short term and the long term to build a strong and effective economy. It is rich that we have Senator Fifield, the former senior political adviser to the former Treasurer Mr Costello, lecturing us. It has been said that the former Treasurer spent the 11½ years of the Howard government in a hammock as the laziest, most indolent and most unimaginative Treasurer that we have ever had. It must have been a double hammock, because Senator Fifield was in there swinging gently with the Treasurer for all those years. He was swinging gently in the hammock while the economic problems of this country piled up; the economic problems that we as a Labor government are setting about fixing. All you want to do is back—