Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Bushby’s contribution just then should remind all of us how isolated, insular and disconnected the coalition is from what is happening out in regional and rural Australia—in the streets and suburbs of our country. Do you not know what is going on out there? Do you not know exactly how much people are bleeding, that they are concerned about their jobs, their incomes, their livelihoods and their standard of living? What do you propose? What does the coalition propose?

We have just heard some diatribe about debt. Let me tell you about what Mr Hockey said this morning on Sunrise. Mr Hockey, at 8.09 this morning, said, ‘Our debt will be smaller.’ I am not sure the coalition are aware of that, that their debt would be smaller than our debt. ‘At least $25 billion smaller.’ Then, as the minders got wind of what Mr Hockey had said, at 8.27, when asked about whether he would have a deficit, the current Leader of the Opposition, Mr Turnbull, said: ‘No, you can’t because you—because I mean you could sit down and you could work out a model but, as we see it, with all these financial models, you know, each assumption becomes fairly subjective.’

They do not know what they stand for. They do not know what they want to do in this current global financial crisis. All they want to do is be seen to be some sort of accountant who adds up and subtracts figures. We are dealing with men, women and families in this country who are in need of assistance from this government and all you would do is sit there and let them burn.

A great article was written by a Labor historian called Robert Murray, who wrote a great book called The split: Australian Labor in the fifties. Mr Murray said that the Depression generation, the parents and grandparents of all of us, said: ‘Why was it that the government did not intervene?’—the government of Joe Lyons and Menzies—with the sorts of great infrastructure projects which we are doing. Why was it that in 1929 to 1931 and in 1940 they could not find the money to do anything about roads, rail, ports, hospitals and schools? Why could they not find that money? But in 1939, the conservative government of that period could find money for guns, tanks, bullets, cannons, aircraft, ships and any other ordnance required for combat—as they should have. That generation asks why that was. Why couldn’t they find the money in 1930 to alleviate the difficulties of the population, but in 1940 they could find that money to stimulate the economy because of a threat? That is what we are doing now. We are finding the money to deal with that economic threat. We are finding it. We are dealing with the issues, unlike yourselves.