Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Introduced by Peter Costello. The question that Mr Rudd and his friends do not address is the really interesting point. It is that, since the Second World War, the democratic left in the West has developed no coherent ideology. They did have socialism, which was the nationalisation of the major means of production and exchange, and what happened? That failed. Tony Blair said it failed. Every leader in the democratic left said it failed. No-one adopted it. Ever since the failure of socialism, there has been no coherent ideology. We had the third wave developed by Mr Blair, but Mr Rudd now says that was cosying up too much to the marketplace; he is going to develop a new ideology. If you read that funny little essay, there are only two policy prescriptions. The first is getting more people to the table and consulting more widely—perhaps that is fair enough—and the other one is—guess what—spend, spend and spend. That is his main policy prescription; he has no other one. What concerns the coalition is where this will end. None of us doubt that there is a crisis. Indeed, the role of government now is to ameliorate the pain in the community. We all accept that. That is the role of government now. But to say that it has been a failure over the last 30 years defies logic. Mr Rudd is a hollow man.