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

I will. Senator Brandis, he never was going to end up being our leader, I can tell you. As Senator Cameron said—without interruption—this demonstrates again the lack of policy, the lack of direction and the lack of leadership of the coalition currently. We have seen the twists and turns they have done over the last 12 months. They are finding it very difficult to be an opposition. As I said, you only have to look at their twists and turns.

I want to go further with what Senator Bernardi said at this gathering of extremists: ‘The Liberal Party will ultimately rediscover the success it seeks through a return to the Menzies inspiration, while remaining mindful of the difference between short-term public opinion and long-term public interest.’ That is what he said in his address to that dinner in inner Western Sydney.

One of the things that has interested me and a number of my colleagues in politics has been the degree to which the coalition has opposed our stimulus package. I think you can pretty much divide non-coalition and coalition supporters on the basis of their approaches to the stimulus package. I can only put it down to one thing: for almost half a century, we in this country—with a variety of governments in power—have enjoyed prosperity and safety. We have not had the political unrest or turmoil that has occurred in Third World countries or in less-developed countries. We have not had the mass insecurity; we have not had the political and social traumas. Our generation never went through those. The coalition is at one with Gordon Gekko: greed is good. That is where they are coming from. This generation—of which I, you, Mr Deputy President, and almost everybody in this room is a member—has never known that insecurity or that lack of prosperity.

I want to go back to what Senator Bernardi said. He harked back to the Menzies era. I would like to talk about some of the achievements of the Menzies government: what it did, what it introduced and why that occurred. That occurred because the men and women of that generation understood exactly what it was for people to be on dole queues and to face starvation, civil unrest, turmoil, suicides, homelessness and the collapse of the economy. They saw it in their lifetime; they saw it from 1929 until World War II commenced. Consensus between the parties, labour and non-labour, was established in this country and almost half a century earlier on the continent in Europe.

I am in the presence of an esteemed Labor historian, Senator Faulkner, so I hope I am not taken to any tribunal for lauding some of the achievements of the Menzies government! Let me tell you what the Menzies government did and remind Senator Bernardi, who, had he reminded the extremists in Leichhardt on Friday night, might have been hanged by them. Let me tell you about the expansion of the Menzies government into education, not only into universities and science labs but also into funding non-government schools. Let me tell you about the maintenance of the Snowy Mountains scheme and the millions of pounds—at that stage—that would have been poured into the construction of that mighty scheme initiated by Labor. It was the Menzies government that created at the CSIRO; it was the Menzies government that expanded the government’s role in social services; it was the Menzies government that expanded the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; it was the Menzies government that expanded pharmaceutical and pensioner medical services; it was the Menzies government that believed in the compulsory conciliation and arbitration system; and it was the Menzies government that expanded significantly the role of the federal government in the provision of services in this country. So I wonder whether Senator Bernardi’s right-wing extremist mates on Friday night knew exactly how much the Menzies government did by consensus to expand the role of government in developing what the Australian economy needed at that time. Did Senator Bernardi’s mates know?

We might call this a stimulus package from 1949 onwards. We might have to call it that, because the government at that time knew exactly what they were confronted with: they were confronted with the images that they had seen for themselves in the Great Depression. A number of them would have seen for themselves the depressions that occurred from the beginning of the 20th century. They were never going to see those things happen again while they could do something about it, and that is equally so where the Rudd government is concerned. We are not going to see dole queues and we are not going to see the unrest or the turmoil that has occurred as a result of the inaction of governments when action is required. This government has decided to intervene because we are not going to forget like the coalition has forgotten. We cannot forget those periods in our own past; we cannot forget that these things occurred, and they are never going to occur again. That is what I cannot understand when people invoke the name of Menzies—they do not necessarily understand the complete contribution by that government in the expansion of the federal role in the provision of services in this country.

I do not think that goes down well with the coalition side, because they do not know their history. Again—and this is one of the terrible things that has been occurring—people have forgotten the past; they have forgotten that turbulence. They have indeed forgotten it, but we have not forgotten it. We know exactly what would happen. We know that our unemployment rate is not anything like what it is in the United States or Britain or continental Europe. We know that we have got people at work. We know that retail sales are going up. We know that, if the coalition did get away with it and was able to block our stimulus package, we would be heading towards 10 per cent unemployment at the moment. We know all these things. Indeed, we have been approved by international bodies. Let me tell you what the IMF said when it welcomed the design and implementation of our stimulus package:

We welcome the quick implementation of targeted and temporary fiscal stimulus. The stimulus provides a sizable boost to domestic demand in 2009 and 2010 that will cushion the impact of global recession.

Well, isn’t that marvellous! That is great if you are one of those people who is actually at work because of the government’s intervention in the economy. It further says:

... the Government’s commitment to return to surpluses and achieve a positive budget balance on average over the medium-term is commendable ... few other advanced economies have adopted such a clear commitment.

That is what we are doing. That is what we have decided to do.

We have been opposed every step of the way by this coalition. They have sat on their hands and they have come up with no alternative policy in this regard. If we had their strategy we believe that there would be an additional 210,000 Australians out of work today. We could not let that happen because we are not going to forget that period from 1929 onwards when there was hopelessness and turmoil. It is not in our make-up and we will ensure that this stimulus package is continued so that men and women in this country are protected from the worst excesses of the global recession.