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

—Oh! Now we have a very incisive piece of economic analysis—now we are blaming the weather for Australia’s poor export performance. It has to be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of your ministers and your Treasurer. I want to quote the heroes of the member for Ryan, because we on this side of the House know nothing about exports or export performance! This is what Treasurer Costello had to say in an interview on 20 September 1995:

Australia has high foreign debt and because Australia has a current account problem, that puts premium on Australian borrowings, that flows through and every Australian pays for the consequences.

Hear, hear! Everybody in the parliament knows what a ‘genius’ this particular Treasurer is. We support that. But he is not the only ‘genius’ on the Liberal side. I will tell you what the current Prime Minister had to say at the launch of a debt truck. It was a measly little old truck back in 1995. Now we have the B-double or triple-double or whatever the terminology is—we have now got the Liberal debt road train. This is what the current Prime Minister said:

If it weren’t for the level of foreign debt, interest rates in this country would be much lower, and every Australian today who owes money on his or her home is paying a higher interest rate than would otherwise be the case because of the size of our foreign debt.

I am quite happy to take the Prime Minister at his word. He has a good record on the never, ever GST! He has a good record on ‘children overboard’! He has a good record on the weapons of mass destruction!

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