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

Thank you. I suggest to you, Mr Acting Deputy President Forshaw, that you do not read it either. Let me point out the salient parts. Right towards the end of this embarrassing essay, Mr Rudd quotes President Sarkozy of France saying ‘laissez faire, c’est finis’; it is the end of laissez faire and the end of liberalism. For a start, as my colleagues know, France never adopted free market economics. That is why they have had 10 per cent unemployment for the last 20 years. Even worse, the irony is perhaps lost on Mr Rudd of something that I read in Monday’s edition of the International Herald Tribune. It was:

Prime Minister François Fillon on Monday rejected demands that the French government seek to stimulate consumer spending, rather than follow his plan to stimulate corporate and infrastructure investment, to lift France out of its economic slump.

He rejected demands; France rejected it. The article went on:

‘It would be irresponsible to chose another policy, which would increase our country’s indebtedness without having more infrastructure and increased competitiveness in the end,’ Fillon said in a speech in Lyon.

If the French can get it right, why can’t this government? Even Mr Rudd’s continental idols do not agree with him. Even the French are spending their money on roads, buildings, ports and railways and renovating infrastructure.

I suppose it comes down to this in the end with this embarrassing little essay: there are three policy prescriptions in this essay. They are: spend, spend and spend. There are no other ideas in it at all. And that is the problem with the Labor Party today, you see: they actually do not believe in anything except opportunism. That is at the heart of the problem in the debate in this parliament and the problem with Mr Rudd. Dostoyevsky was right: if you believe in nothing, you will do anything to survive politically, even if you have to mortgage the country in so doing and even if you have to mortgage future generations. That will be on Mr Rudd’s head and on the head of this government. (Time expired)