Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

There's hope for the Liberal Party if you stay. We've given up on Senator Bragg, who once used to espouse economic liberalism and socially progressive values, but there wasn't much of a difference between what Senator Bragg just said then on housing policy and what Jim Cairns might've said about foreign investment. There is not much of a difference between what Senator Bragg says and what Senator Hanson and Senator Roberts say about foreign investment.

It's time for, as they say in the classics, a good, long, hard look at yourselves on the foreign investment question. What's been going on, whether it's on Future Made in Australia or the housing fund, is you're trying to give people the heebie-jeebies about foreign investment. Rex Connor used to do it—again, he's a good fella. He spent a bit of time detained. Jim Cairns used to do it. He was a very interesting fella, Mr Cairns. He was Treasurer in the Whitlam government. He was a bit worried about foreign investment too. Senator Hanson, Senator Roberts and Senator Bragg are all very concerned about foreign investment.

I read this, and it just shows the arrogance and smugness of the Liberal Party on questions of economic management. They haven't learnt the lesson that they should have spent this term reflecting upon. You believe that you're fated, in the eastern suburbs circuits that you walk in, where there's the clink of champagne glasses and the runny noses and the hubbub of voices as you all talk to yourselves about what great economic managers you all are. The truth is you don't do the intellectual job of examining whether that's really true. You just assume, and there's an intellectual laziness about that, a lack of curiosity, a smugness, a complacency, a lack of hunger for the national interest. It's the old failures, Morrison leftovers, all going to the same fundraisers, all hanging out together with the well-heeled set: 'Everything is alright. We're the superior economic managers.' That's why you end up with a shadow Treasurer like Mr Taylor. That's how you get there. It's the bottom of the fiscal and economic policy barrel.

The truth is—I heard the Treasurer say this the other day and I sort of liked it—this lot forecast surpluses. They put out the mugs. I've got one of the mugs in my office. I drink a cup of tea out of it regularly. It says, 'Back in the black.' Well, it never ever happened because the Morrison government, the Liberals and the Nationals, weren't up to decent economic management. This government has been back in the black, back to back; twice—not just one year but two years. We've turned a conga line of Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses, with good economic management, with a disciplined approach to fiscal policy, led by my colleague Senator Gallagher, who actually knows what she's doing.

Senator Cormann and Senator Birmingham and all the former failed finance ministers—and Prime Minister Morrison, who was also finance minister for a time, when he didn't tell anybody, including Senator Birmingham. They had multiple finance minister. No wonder the show couldn't run itself. They talk tough. It's the old Liberal message, the entitlement, the smugness of 'we're great economic managers'. But they ran the show over a cliff, with a trillion dollars in debt and nothing to show for it. They have cast a shadow over public finances for generations to come.

The truth is pursuing a surplus is not about a coffee mug. We delivered the surpluses, but do you see any Labor coffee mugs? No, because we're doers, not talkers. We're lifters, not leaners. In this show, we lift everybody up; we're exhorting the Public Service to greater performance, making sure we do it in the public interest. A surplus isn't something to be put on a mug; it's designed to achieve a public policy objective. At this moment, when you need government to be acting in the acting interest—