Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition rolled out their tame economist, Professor Henry Ergas, to present an argument against the Treasury modelling. This is the same Professor Ergas who tries to tell us how to run the economy, who tries to tell Treasury where they have it right and wrong, and it is the same Professor Ergas who could not even run his own small business and ended up in liquidation. So I do not really think that Professor Ergas has got much credibility to lecture the Treasury or the government on how to run the economy, when he could not even run his own business. What an absolute joke. This is the same Professor Ergas who wrote the coalition's tax policy that never saw the light of day. It was so good that it was ditched. So I really do not take much notice of Professor Henry Ergas as some guru, telling government or the Treasury how they should be doing business. That is the first point.

The second point is that climate change denial by the coalition continues. They attempt to build up some conspiracy theory that the same Treasury which did the modelling for the GST, the same Treasury which used the same modelling on the GST, is involved in some kind of conspiracy against the Australian public. I know Senator Birmingham always gets agitated when we talk about climate change, because Senator Birmingham used to actually believe in doing something.