Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Four hundred dollars a car. Senator Carr and the Labor Party are arguing for a subsidy, yet they come in here and refuse to even allow a vote on repealing this lead in the saddlebags of the Australian car industry. Even if you disagree about the number, surely getting rid of the burden will help. But, no, that is not good enough. Over my 5½ years in this place I have seen a number of proposals come in here for subsidies. There was even the idea of the Rudd bank; there have been Senator Carr's constant promises that you know are never going to be delivered; there has been money flowing, then money being taken away. I have not heard of promises to save thousands of jobs in tourism that might have gone in Queensland or, indeed, in parts of regional and coastal Victoria, because Labor only wants to protect some jobs. We have a responsibility to the entire community. First and foremost, this economy—as, indeed, the Hawke and Keating government started arguing 30 years ago today—needs to be exposed to global competition and you need to have a balanced budget. You need to get your fiscal house in order.

So for Senator Carr to try to confect outrage, to mislead people into saying that somehow it is only in the last 12 or 13 weeks that the car industry in Australia has had challenges, and then, most of all, to try to lead them into believing that he could have saved them is to ignore his record. It was on his watch that Ford went after he gave them taxpayers' money and there is nothing that Senator Carr can say now that can correct his record where he saw two car companies close and others threaten to.