Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall is at it again. He is not prepared to talk on this matter but he is prepared to yap, yap, yap across the chamber. If you are so anxious about this, get up and make a speech. I will be looking forward to it. The reality is that the Australian Labor Party is hopelessly out of its depth. This is just the latest in a string of mistakes. Of course, we have the nonexistent inflation genie. Remember that the genie was out of the bottle. The Prime Minister and Mr Swan were out there goading the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates. They almost threatened the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates. You were told what the impact of that would be. You were told that this economy was in real strife. But, no, you had been running the inflation genie political argument for three months, and you were still doing it in the May budget. Everyone knew at that stage. Blind Freddie knew by May that if you were to put higher interest rates into this economy you would kill it dead. No, you were prepared to run the political argument because you had been on a political course for six months and nothing was going to stand in the way of cheap politics, certainly not killing the Australian economy dead. You were running this line about the inflation genie, and you killed this economy stone-cold dead. In May, you were still doing it.

Then we had the unlimited bank deposit guarantee. This is a government that is totally out of its depth. We had the cash splash before Christmas. I hope those opposite are proud of this outcome, by the way. I hope you will be similarly proud of the potential outcome of this cash splash. I would just like to read something from the Colac Herald to put all this into some sort of perspective:

Gamblers also broke the highest-ever spend on Colac poker machines for a one-month period in December with $756,000, or $24,387 a day, spent.

The December record smashed the previous record of $691,000…

If that is the outcome of a cash splash which you think would benefit the Australian economy, then you need to have a good, long, hard think on what the outcomes are going to be. If you think that an increase in problem gambling is an appropriate outcome of this cash splash, then you will stand utterly condemned for your behaviour. You have been lauding a very marginal increase in retail figures in December, which of course includes alcohol and gambling, which you are not prepared to talk about. I will finish these remarks after question time, but I just want you to think long and hard about this: are you members of a government that is prepared to put at risk the lives of people with gambling addiction by making it easier for that addiction to grow? If that is an outcome that you think is appropriate, then say so. If you think problem gambling is not an issue, you say so. But you have to accept that one of the outcomes of this cash splash will be an increase in spending on alcohol and an increase in spending on gambling. You know that, I know that—we all know that. That is the only outcome that will come from this.