Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It did not open up on time, Senator Sherry. That has never happened in Australia before. So not only do we have a stock market that does not understand the instructions handed down by the regulators—via the government, I should add, who are in constant contact with the regulators; and you have some responsibility in that—but we have never had the stock exchange be late in opening. It happens under a Labor government. But, worse than that, as I said, the real benchmark in the first 12 months of this government, the real effect upon hundreds of thousands of Australians, is in fact the knee-jerk reaction in placing a blanket guarantee over bank deposits. Blind Freddy could have seen, with bells and whistles, what was going to happen once you made that decision—and it did happen. Of course people moved, or attempted to move, their own savings and deposits into the more secure deposits, the banks. The non-bank sector was severely affected and had to bring down a freeze. I do not know how long that freeze is going to last, or what legality there is behind that freeze lasting anything more than 12 months. And once it is lifted we do not know what the reaction is going to be. But what we do know is that the decision was a mistake and it ought to be adjusted. It should have been adjusted within days, but it still stands today because of the pride of the Prime Minister. Senator Sherry ought to march in there and say, ‘The damage this decision—’. No, of course you would not; of course you are laughing. It is an absurd suggestion to think you would ever have that sort of courage. You would not get past the receptionist, Senator Sherry. But someone with courage, someone in the caucus, someone in the party room, ought to have that decision reversed, because hundreds of thousands of Australians cannot access their property, their rights. What right has a government to cause that sort of effect? Of course, the banks themselves have made the suggestion to the government that the guarantee ought to be capped. The Reserve Bank gave advice that the guarantee ought to be capped. But we have a Prime Minister determined to stick to the decision he made, come what may, whatever the cancerous effect that it is having in the financial world.

And we have the mid-year review. Who is believing that? No-one. It is already out of date. It was fiddled with so as to give a two per cent growth rate that not even the IMF, the OECD or the Reserve Bank could agree with. Only the government would come up with that figure, produced by Treasury, and we already know it is a fallacy and is not to be believed. You cannot work off that figure, but the government is working off it. We all know—Access Economics on the 7.30 Report tonight were quite adamant—that this is a budget that is going to plunge into deficit. So, within the first 12 months of this government, there goes the surplus—blown. Blown on what? On this bill that has no modelling at all. It is just a knee-jerk reaction to throw money out there—and they call themselves economic conservatives. I guess that was another commitment that the government made, that they were economic conservatives. They are far from being economic conservatives. This is classic Labor after 12 months. I had no idea you would rush to being such a Labor Party within the first 12 months. This is quite stunning. I would have thought that maybe by the third year we would have seen you reveal yourselves as Labor being Labor. But nothing has become more sure in 12 months than that this is a Labor government, incompetent in their management, who have made a bad world economic situation worse. Yet they came in with a legacy that other governments would kill for. That is actually a quote from the Reserve Bank governor. He said other countries would kill for the fundamentals that Australia has. Labor has failed the report card. (Time expired)