Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

There are highly reputable economists and economic organisations—I can list them and quote from them—that have supported the stimulus strategy, not just in Australia but around the world. The last winner of the Nobel economics prize, Mr Joseph Stiglitz, put in a recent article:

Countries, like Australia, that implemented large, well-designed stimulus programs early emerged from the crisis faster. Other countries succumbed to the old orthodoxy pushed by the financial wizards who got us into this mess in the first place.

What we have opposite are the financial wizards Senator Abetz and his colleagues, the Liberal-National Party, who vehemently opposed the Labor government’s stimulus package. That was their policy prescription: sit back, do nothing, let the unemployment queues grow, let businesses close and fail. That was their prescription. That is not the prescription of the Labor government, fortunately. (Time expired)