Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The perspective that you are putting is incredible. Yours is a somewhat limited business background, Senator Brandis, in the eyes of most people who operate in business environments. Yes, maybe, in relation to your legal practice, that has occurred. But unfortunately, as I have said before, the lack of any credible economic commentary in this debate astounds me.

Let me move on and talk about yesterday. One would have hoped that the representation that was put forward in the debate yesterday might indeed have gone on to those areas. We had Senator Fifield on that occasion making descriptions such as ‘Forrest Gump meets Chauncey Gardiner’. We had Senator Bernardi talking about ‘kevinometrics’. But, again, there is just no substantive element to these debates. Like Senator Arbib, I am very much looking forward to tonight to see if there is any credible substance to this scare campaign that is being mounted. Will we see what additional cuts the coalition would propose to achieve a debt that is $25 billion lower? Will we see those figures? Will we see where those cuts occur? Somehow, I very much suspect not. But I would very much like to see my expectations denied.

Before I go into the broader perspective of our situation, one other element that I want to address about the commentary in this place concerns the interjections that have occurred in recent times in relation to the assessment of this budget. Senators in this chamber have interjected that we have referred to only one credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s. This is simply not the case. The three major rating agencies have supported our economic standing. If I have the time a bit later—because I do intend to take my full 20 minutes putting some perspective into this debate—I will go into the detail of what those three rating agencies do indeed say. I will return to my main point about the perspective on our situation and the perspective that has been lacking in this debate so far. Australia is not immune to the global financial crisis.