Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have just had half an hour of the coalition economic A-team—Senator Williams, Senator Bernardi and Senator Bushby. And what have we heard from them? Nothing of any intellectual substance. Nothing on any economic position that will take this country forward—absolutely nothing. I will turn first to the contribution by Senator Williams. I see that he has now gone. No wonder he left the chamber after that performance he put in. You know it is typical of the coalition. They do not want to talk about jobs for these kids up here in the gallery. They do not want to talk about the future; they want to talk about the past and they want to talk about scare campaigns. They just want to go back to where they were when they were in government—a bunch of no-hopers with no vision and no plan for this country. When they are in trouble, they always go back to the scare campaigns. Remember children overboard? That is where they go: children overboard. They go back to terrorism when they are in trouble. They go back to refugees when they are in trouble. Recently they went to emails when they were in trouble. But those emails were fakes and forgeries and they have been caught out in the same way they were caught out with children overboard.

Senator Williams came in here and tried to give us a lecture on rural economics—an economic lecture from the National Party. Senator O’Brien spoke about Senator Williams having blinkers, and we had the horse analogy. Well, let me tell you, when Senator Williams goes back to Inverell, goes back to Armidale, goes back to Wee Waa, or goes back to Tamworth and tells people that he does not want any money spent on the schools in those regional areas, then he will come back not as a horse with blinkers but as a gelding. He will be an absolute gelding. Senator Williams has got an absolute hide coming in here and talking about economics.

I went onto the National Party website. I thought, ‘Let’s have a look at the National Party’s achievements.’ You know what I got? A list of the National Party’s economic achievements which could not even make three A4 pages—it went for 2½ pages.