Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposite, who all of a sudden have discovered the words ‘schools’, ‘hospitals’ and ‘infrastructure’, who starved the states of public housing funding, who starved the states of hospital funding and who starved the states of education funding, now want to stand here and be taken seriously. If you want to be taken seriously on schools, on infrastructure and on roads, vote for this package. If you want to be taken seriously, vote for this package to protect families and to protect jobs.

When you return to Tasmania and start explaining to people that you are more interested in playing short-term politics than protecting their jobs, you will suddenly discover that all the short-term politics in the world will not protect you from voter backlash. What you are putting forward here is crocodile tears about public infrastructure when you had 12 years to do something about it. What you did was rip the funds out of all public infrastructure. (Time expired)