Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

You know all about communist China, Senator Cameron. I guess you are like many of those opposite who were pretty close to the communist Chinese back in the days when they were not as open as they are today. We wonder about the Minister for Defence and his association back in the days, as I say, when we were not quite as open with the Chinese and the Chinese were not as open with everyone else as they are now.

As a reader of history, this arrangement where the government gets involved in big business and in big unions and starts to control big business reminds me of the fascist regimes in Italy, Spain and Germany back in the twenties and thirties. Have a look at this bill—propping up the four major Australian banks. As Senator Boyce quite rightly pointed out they have been doing pretty well. She mentioned that their profits last year were somewhere near the $8 billion mark—and good on them. But why is the government coming in and propping up these major Australian financial institutions? Earlier in the term of this government we heard that it guaranteed the deposits of the Australian banks to what I understand was a contingent liability of some $600 to $700 billion. On top of that, we have this very strange bill before us today where the government is getting involved in protecting the banks from an eventuality which most think is unlikely. The Reserve Bank governor threw doubt on Mr Rudd’s reason for establishing this bank. Why is the government doing it? Do you think it is perhaps that the government will, more and more, nurture major Australian enterprises so that it can manipulate them to its political will, as it does the trade union movement and an increasingly un-independent public service around Australia? It is not too bad in the Commonwealth at the moment—