Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I note with interest that Senator Cameron was interjecting on Senator Kroger. Senator Kroger said that Senator Cameron had no experience with small business. That is not true. He has a lot of experience with small business: he used to get big ones and make them considerably smaller! That was his contribution to employment in this country. I noted with interest, as well, that Senator Cameron was again interjecting on Senator Kroger. Where were the likes of Senator Cameron during the debacles surrounding the BER program, the pink batts program and the remarkable waste involved with those programs, which have not single-handedly put upward pressure on interest rats but have been an enormous contributor to it? Where was the Australian Labor Party backbench when they had the opportunity to have some input into this wanton expenditure driven by a political agenda for which there was no excuse?

Where was Senator Cameron? Where were the rest of the backbench when their government was out spending the funds of Australians on building education programs and pink batt programs for which there was no excuse? Senator Cameron knows full well that the figures of waste in relation to those two programs alone were absolutely mind-blowing. Did the government, having been warned about this, do anything—make any attempt to reduce that spending? No, they did not. From recollection, the BER was at least identified as having $1½ billion in wastage and $5 million in overexpenditure—or the other way around.

It is clear that in the Australian Labor Party, if you muck up, you get promoted. The member for Kingsford Smith has been promoted—or was he promoted because he made a mess of this or, as reported by former Senator Richardson, because he said he was going to create a by-election if he was not retained in the cabinet? It is one of two things. You will either get rewarded for economic failure which puts upward pressure on interest rates—you get a boot up the cabinet tree if you make a debacle of a program like this—or you are too precious to sack because, if you get sacked and go to a by-election, there is a very fair chance that in the seat of Kingsford Smith the Australian Labor Party would get rolled. This was a threat. One of those two things has happened.

I want to refer to some articles in today’s paper. I will preface these comments with this comment—