Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz, you made a general critique; I am responding in a general way. I accept that. I am not going to take an inordinate amount of time in my response. I would argue, and I came to this conclusion very early on in this place and very early on in opposition, that we have very good officers in Treasury and Finance. Yes, there will be disagreements from time to time but we have got very good officers who do the very best they can. They overwhelmingly get it right. There are some occasions when they do make mistakes and there are some occasions when they do not get it right but, overwhelmingly, they do. So I have every confidence in them. That is a confidence I have developed not just over the year in government in my dealings with them; that is the view I developed over many, many years. So I do want to defend Treasury officials. I confess to once having a sharp exchange, and I think I went one step too far with one official in my almost 12 years but, overwhelmingly, they do an extraordinarily good job.

I reflected earlier on the range of issues that have come on this government. I reflected on the range of issues that I certainly did not expect, when I became a minister, as a consequence of this world financial and economic crisis—issues that I would not have dreamt would become public policy issues of such contention, and I specifically mentioned short selling and there are many other issues, because of the very rapidly evolving and changing world financial and economic crisis. I would not have dreamed, a year ago, that you would have the banking system in the US and the UK collapsing. I would not have dreamed it possible that the US would be nationalising banks. I do not think anyone, certainly not my Labor colleagues, would have dreamed that you would see George Bush, US Republican President, nationalising banks. That is just how extraordinarily circumstances have changed in the last year.

I will conclude there. I think it gives you some indication of the very different nature of the outlook that we face today compared to three months ago, compared to a year ago or compared to 18 months ago. I do not believe I have seen economic circumstances, other than perhaps the oil shock of the early 70s, change so rapidly and, unfortunately, detrimentally before around the world in my lifetime.