John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

he voted against the sale of Telstra, which helped to fund the elimination of our $96 billion national debt left by courtesy of his colleagues. His frontbench colleague says, ‘Oh, we believe in a $5 billion higher education fund.’ The only problem is that, if the Leader of the Opposition had his way, there would be no surplus out of which that $5 billion fund could be established.

The truth is that every single opportunity the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues have had in this place over the last 11 years to put to rights the wrongs that they left us in 1996 has been passed up. Now he is asking the Australian people to forget about the last 11 years—‘Don’t look at the fact that I oppose tax reform, I oppose paying off our debt, I oppose getting the budget back into surplus, I oppose industrial relations reform, I oppose the sale of Telstra. Don’t look at any of that; forget all about that. Airbrush that out of my record and out of Australian political history. Just believe me: I am reformed and I believe in responsible economic management.’

I say to the Leader of the Opposition through you, Mr Speaker, that, in the great debate about economic credibility, the Australian people will be reminded with increasing frequency, with increasing scrutiny and in an increasingly meticulous way of the failure of the Leader of the Opposition in all the years he has been in this place since 1998 to demonstrate that he has the credentials to call himself economically responsible.

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