Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. The whole problem is that now you have politicians setting their own wages. When the public complain about our wages in future, how can we defend them by saying they have been set by an independent authority?

Let us have a look at the economic indicators. We have got inflation, which is being painted as a great bogeyman and as an emergency that we have got to face, that is below the OECD average. In December 2007 inflation was at three per cent. For the OECD the average was 3.3 per cent. What have we got? We have got high growth, very low unemployment, the participation rate at record levels and a net government surplus. This is not to talk about what is happening with the state governments, of course, who are going into deficit, further pushing up inflation which the Labor Party purports to be so—

See this speech in context