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

With all due respect, Senator Cameron would not understand. I do not think he has ever been in business or ever had to worry about paying the wages bill, paying off the bank loan and trying to meet the commitments that one has when one is in the productive part of the community.

Back in those days we understood about Labor’s control of the economy and their inability simply to manage money. Last night we had a repetition, multiplied by about 10, of the ineptness of the Labor governments of the past. It makes me wonder why it is that the Labor government seems to be turning us back into the socialist state that even Mr Whitlam could only have dreamed about. We now find that the Labor government is taking us back to the Telecom days of owning the communications system in Australia. Those of us who are a little older than you, Madam Acting Deputy President, remember what the communications system was like when the government ran it, when it was run by political patronage and dependent on which seats the Labor Party wanted to favour this time. That is how the communications system was run in those days. Since telecommunications have been privatised, the world has opened up to all of us who are interested in rapid and innovative communication. But Labor want to turn back the clock to socialism, a philosophy that not even Russia considers these days. Even communist China, the last remaining major—