Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You haven’t forgotten. That is why you keep denying and opposing this government’s logical and reasonable policies to help out working families—working families that need assistance. You sit over there and you oppose the stimulus packages and you oppose the flood levy and the cyclone package on the basis that you do not want to care about or help out Queenslanders. You want to sit back and not let them get to work even though the railway bridges have been washed away and the roads are in disrepair. You are prepared to sit back and do nothing the way you usually do. That is your position.

I am a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and numerous ambassadors appear before us. One thing they have told us over the last couple of years since 2009, when the global financial crisis hit us, is that they acknowledge how well the federal government of Australia has handled this global financial crisis. We are the envy of the world. These ambassadors cannot believe the way we have handled the economy. For the first time, and I stand to be corrected, we have got the mantle of economic responsibility as a government—something that the opposition certainly used to crow about and claim that they held. But now the public respect the way we manage the economy. They trust us on the way we manage the economy and, once again, we have a proven track record on that.

I will use as an example one of the stimulus package mechanisms we put in place—the Building the Education Revolution. I know it is another part of the stimulus package that those opposite opposed. I know that some of them do not turn up to the openings of those marvellous establishments—the halls, libraries and refurbished schools—but there is a handful of them in Queensland who come along with big grins on their faces for the photographs. They love standing in front of the new hall or library for which anything up to $3.2 million was received and which has stimulated the economy and provided jobs during a time when the global financial crisis was starting to bite. What did the opposition do? They opposed the program because they were not prepared to stand up and protect workers and jobs at a time of global financial crisis. They did nothing. They opposed it in the same way they opposed the Queensland flood and cyclone levy. They are not prepared to assist workers when the time and need arise.