Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Doug Cameron into the chamber to start carrying on like what you hear. Speaking there, people of Australia, is the financial brains of the Labor Party. Senator Doug Cameron is a great representation of the financial acumen of the Australian Labor Party. That is why we get so concerned about their lack of capacity to be decisive and their lack of capacity to be transparent. We are concerned about the arrogance they now have. They get a document that has been publicly paid for and they sit on it. They go forward with grand statements of fiscal prudence yet they do not have the capacity to table the premier document.

This is the same Labor Party that said they were fiscally conservative. What an absolute joke. They say there is a problem finding $3.2 billion. I put to you: how are you going to pay off the $120 billion worth of debt you have now? How are you going to finance that? Where is that going to come from? If you have a problem with $3.2 billion, what are you going to do with an interest bill somewhere between $6 billion and $8 billion now? How are you going to finance that? If $3.2 billion is a problem, why on earth did you spend $3.2 billion on ceiling insulation?

This is the financial acumen of a party that is taking us to Hades in a basket because they just do not have the capacity to manage the numbers. This is the party that went to the Australian people will all the marvellous rhetorical statements, the guile, the cunning and the smoothness, but they just do not have the capacity to deliver. They cannot deliver the outcome; they cannot deliver the document; they cannot table the Henry tax review. They just do not have financial management in their DNA. Now we are seeing them.

What we have here is a clear expose that the finances of this nation are out of control. The finances of this nation are out of control and the Labor Party have not got a clue how they are going to pay back the debt. They are sitting on the Henry tax review trying to work out how the numbers all stick together, but they have not got a clue. It is panic stations in the Labor Party and they will not table the review. It has been delivered by the head of Treasury; it has been delivered by Dr Henry. Don’t they think he is competent? Don’t they think he was up to the job? What are they hiding? I think he is an immensely competent person. Why don’t you table the review? What are you trying to hide? What is the problem? What are you trying to hide?

What are we going to get instead of the Henry tax review? Senator Doug Cameron. There is the epistle of economic clarity—Senator Doug Cameron. That is what we get in place of the Henry tax review. We can listen to Senator Doug Cameron any day of the week if we turn on the radio.