Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Ryan can go on mauling me, but he won’t injure me. As I said, it is like getting mauled by a dead sheep. The problem that the honourable member for Ryan has is that Australia is awash with Liberal debt—a half a billion dollars of Liberal debt. I am willing to concede on this occasion to the honourable member for Ryan that I do not know anything about economic analysis, and nobody in the opposition knows anything about economic analysis, so I will defer to the honourable member for Ryan’s heroes. His heroes are in the parliament as we speak today. I refer to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, who are feeding off the great economy that Labor left them.

How could a Treasurer of Australia, having been left four years of four per cent growth by Labor, and facing the best terms of trade Australia has ever had, engineer an economy to grow at only 2.75 per cent last year, and only 3.5 per cent this year? He is a whacko Treasurer for doing that, isn’t he?

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