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

That is indeed a welcome endorsement, which I will take back to the internal processes within the Labor Party! Since the accession of Mr Abbott to the Liberal leadership we have seen a sharp turn of that party from what I suppose Malcolm Turnbull believed. He was in many ways one of the honourable heirs of the founder of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies. Robert Menzies was a true liberal. In fact, in his signature speech in 1942, when he spoke about the forgotten people—whom he was to successfully appeal to in 1949—he marked out the differences between the party he wished to represent and other parties. I will quote him:

Let me first define it by exclusion. I exclude at one end of the scale the rich and powerful: those who control great funds and enterprises, and are as a rule able to protect themselves—though it must be said that in a political sense they have as a rule shown neither comprehension nor competence.

I think the modern conservative party now taken over by Tony Abbott would qualify for that—‘neither comprehension nor competence’. What we are speaking about is part of the stimulus package that this government initiated when the world was struck by the greatest financial crisis we had had since the Great Depression. It was this government that decided to act, rather than let the economic forces operate without some sort of restraint—and let me tell my conservative colleagues over there on your left, Mr Deputy President, about that.

Let me tell you the OECD’s statistics for unemployment last year: Australia, 5.6 per cent; Canada, 8.3 per cent; Finland, 8.3 per cent; France, 9.4 per cent; Ireland, 11.8 per cent; Hungary, 10.1 per cent; United Kingdom, 7.8 per cent; and the United States, 9.3 per cent. In two years America’s unemployment rate rose from 4.6 to 9.3 per cent.

We as a government understood that we had to act. We could not just let market forces operate—and nor did your party, Mr Deputy President, when they came into power in 1949. They knew that there was a need for the state to intervene, to make sure that the economy kicked over. They were not going to let anything like the Great Depression happen again, when political crises led to turmoil and revolution. That is what the real Liberal Party did. They knew what they had to do. They had to act, and that is exactly what this government has done. It has pushed money into the economy and stimulated the economy so that this does not happen to us.

Again, I go back to our unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent. This has expanded all over our country, not just in the cities but in regional and rural Australia. We have the strongest economic growth of any of the 33 world economies. We are the only country in that group that has recorded positive growth. Let me tell you what has occurred in this period for our colleagues in the north. The US economy has contracted 3.9 per cent. The euro area has contracted 4.7 per cent. The United Kingdom has contracted 5.5 per cent. Japan, our second greatest trading power, has contracted 6.4 per cent. This has happened since the global financial crisis. It has not happened in this country, because this government has sought to intervene—whether it is in this program or other programs—to make sure the people in this country are not left destitute, homeless and unemployed.