Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

These are serious times, of course, and serious times require serious action, not just any action but serious action. I know that politicians in the face of a crisis want to do something, they want to be seen to be doing something, but just doing ‘something’, just to be seen to be doing ‘something’, is not enough. Serious times require serious consideration of what is the best way forward for Australia. It requires serious engagement between government and opposition, not a government that comes in here and says: ‘Take it or leave it. We want to spend $42 billion of taxpayers’ money. Just roll over and within 36 hours we want to sign off on it.’ That is sheer arrogance. It is reckless and irresponsible and for the government to even expect that we would go along with it is just breathtaking. We have the responsibility to give serious consideration to this legislation to ensure that what we do here in Canberra does not make things worse across Australia.

Yes, we are facing a serious and significant economic challenge, but this package is not the answer. This is a reckless package. It is a misguided, ill-thought-out package. It is a package put out by a government in panic mode. Faced with a global economic downturn, the government has pushed the panic button instead of coming up with some real solutions. Faced with a global economic downturn, Labor has reverted to type—spend, spend, spend; tax, tax, tax; borrow, borrow, borrow—like Senator Cash has just said. They are spending like drunken sailors. ‘Let’s throw some more money at the wall and see what happens.’

This latest Labor government continues, of course, in the bad tradition of previous Labor administrations. Labor has a history of mismanaging our economy. Under Paul Keating it was the ‘recession we had to have’ and a $96 billion deficit. Today under Prime Minister Rudd it is a deficit we have to have—and a $111 billion deficit at that. And let us not forget the socialism we had to have under Gough Whitlam, or the bank nationalisation we had to have under Ben Chifley. What else are we going to have? Are we going to put the economic potential of this great nation of ours at risk under future Labor administrations? At the end of the day, every time Labor has been in charge of the economy it has ended up in tears, with the Australian people having to foot the bill.

If the government happens to be successful in getting this package through, this will also end up in tears and it will be the Australian people yet again who will have to foot the bill. This $42 billion package does nothing to fix the problems we are facing. This package will actually make things worse. This package is reckless, it is ineffective and it is the wrong way to go. How did the government want the opposition to deal with this? They wanted us to rubber-stamp $42 billion in additional spending. They wanted this parliament, the parliament representing the people of Australia, to approve $42 billion in spending in less than 36 hours—more than one billion dollars per hour of scrutiny. To expect us to go along with this is just scandalous.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate was having a go at the opposition in question time yesterday—he did it again today and he did it this morning as he was introducing this legislation—because we were not prepared to give up our job of holding the government to account. I made the odd interjection yesterday in question time and on one interjection I was pulled up by the President for calling the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Evans, a hypocrite, and I withdrew—