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

I will not be lectured by the coalition on economic responsibility—absolutely no way. This is a government who has delivered for this country, a government who have strong growth. The economy is nearly 13 per cent larger than when we came to power. We are now the 12th largest economy in the world. We have a AAA credit rating. We have low unemployment—5.2 per cent. We have an exceptional job creation record. We have contained inflation. We have a low cash rate and interest rates are sitting at some of their lowest ever. That means that a family with a $300,000 mortgage is paying $5,000 less in repayments every year than under the coalition government. We have very low debt. We are the envy of the world in relation to our debt. And, on investment, there has been $1 trillion worth of investment since Labor came to power.

You just cannot get away with one-liners when you come to talk about the economy. You really cannot get away with the nonsense that spews out of Senator Joyce. I know that some of you guys over there are embarrassed when you see Senator Joyce in full flight. Well, I am sure that the voters of New England will see him in full flight and will certainly cast their view on what he will be doing.

What is the great Liberal tradition? The great Liberal tradition on the economy is: if there is a problem, throw money at the problem. That is what the coalition do. What have you got now? You had a problem with your leader, Mr Tony Abbott. The problem was that women did not respect Mr Abbott. So what was the decision? 'Well, we will give women earning up to $150,000 a year 26 weeks paid maternity leave.'

Now the rebellion has started in the coalition. Mr Hawke, Dr Jensen, Dr Washer and Senator Eggleston are all saying that this is a problem, not consistent with coalition values—whatever they are. Senator Joyce was out defending it today, when every one of the Nationals has told you that it is a dog of a policy. It is a policy that you should not put in. It is economically irresponsible. It is unfair. It is unegalitarian. And you know that is the position, so you know you are in trouble with that.

I heard Senator Ryan talking before the Senate sat for question time today. He said, 'We have a conservative approach to budgeting.' Let us go back and have a look at how the last coalition government actually budgeted. I like the quote from George Megalogenis where he said:

Every voter that cried "cost of living" was given a wad of cash to quieten them down.

That is the great economic responsibility of the Howard government—an absolute joke. He said:

The competition for handouts infected the government itself. Howard and Costello argued, repeatedly, over the quantity and the content of the largesse.

That was the coalition's position on the economy. You had the Treasurer and the Prime Minister arguing about largesse, and you had Mr Costello done over by the Prime Minister time and time again. He was done over—that guy had no backbone, a jelly backbone, and no credibility—and he just gave in. That is the problem we had. George Megalogenis said:

While Howard searched for the next payment to make to his target audience Costello tried to reinforce a sense of purity—

well, he failed—

by cutting income taxes as well.

He said:

The upshot was taxes were no longer being collected to provide public services, or to build buffers in good times to deploy in bad times, but to churn back to the electorate. The budget became a frequent-voter program …

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