David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When one looks at the facts the truth is that the Labor Party has become the party of responsible economic management in this country. It is the Labor Party that has the true claim, here and now, to be the fiscal conservatives of this country. In our very first budget Treasurer Swan produced a $21 billion surplus—a $21 billion surplus that was immediately subjected to the sabotage of coalition senators in this place. It is the Rudd Labor government that has followed the orthodox, proper advice about how to handle the global financial crisis. It is the Labor Party that produced a stimulus package that was consistent with orthodox economic thinking and it was those opposite who opposed the stimulus. It was those opposite who would rather have plunged this country into recession and abandon their own tired slogans and preconditions.

Even when considering climate change, it was the Labor Party that looked for market mechanisms to produce that important reform this country needed and it was those opposite who once again went back to the tired old solutions of non-market action, non-market mechanisms and big government. So put the tired slogans aside when looking at the history and the facts. It is easy to see that those opposite in fact are not the party of small government and they are not the party of low taxation. Their record in office tells a very different story. In fact, we can see it in an article that was produced in the spring of 2006 in the journal Policy. The article, titled ‘The Rise of Big Government Conservatism’, finished with this spectacular bit of data:

Even in the traditional areas of social democratic spending, emphasis—

(Time expired)