Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

The minister prattles on about our $96 billion of debt when his government came to office. Let me remind the House of the sclerotic state of the economy in 1983 when Labor came to power. Who was Treasurer of the nation at the time? It was John Winston Howard, the current Prime Minister. The economic mismanagement and mess that was left to us we had to correct. We had a recession in 1982-83 and real GDP had fallen 1.4 per cent. We had unemployment at 10 per cent, inflation at 11½ per cent and interest rates at 16 per cent. That occurred when John Howard was Treasurer of the nation in 1983. That was the legacy that Labor inherited. That is what Labor had to turn around.

The minister talks about the debt that Labor left. Let us remind the House of the debt that John Howard left this nation. There was debt in every one of the years from 1976 to 1982-83, accumulative—a $35 billion debt in those days. I have not had a chance to calculate what the figure would represent today, but if you made a comparison with 1996, when they won office, it would be higher, I suggest, than the $96 billion. This government believes that it is the one that corrected the state of this economy. It did not, because Labor inherited that sclerotic mess and set about correcting it. It set about correcting it, in cooperation with the trade union movement in this country, through the prices and incomes accord. Do you know why we had such a pathetic performing economy with high unemployment, high inflation and high interest rates when John Howard was last Treasurer?

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