Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

We have an opposition here that are prepared to say anything—no matter how destructive, no matter how puerile, no matter how much it conflicts with what they said five minutes ago. We had Senator Abetz yesterday waving around the government’s car plan and bemoaning the fact that it does not have enough pages. That was the position yesterday. I agree that it is a great read, but I would put to Senator Abetz and all the other Liberal senators a simple proposition: if you get to the end of our car plan and you still want more, I suggest you go back and read it again, because you might understand it the second time around.

There is certainly a lot more meat in the plan that we outlined this week when compared to the previous government’s efforts. They ran things out in their 1997 car package which filled one single page. In 1998, it stretched to three pages. And, apparently, exhausted by that effort, they could manage two pages when they returned to the question in 2002. Of course, that was the last we heard on the auto industry from the previous government because they had a simple policy: leave the industry on automatic pilot. They took the view that, no matter how the operating environment changes, you leave the industry on automatic pilot. I would suggest to Liberal senators that they read the Bracks review and read our response—and they might actually learn something. But why should the opposition—