Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley for his question. Today at the Press Club we heard an extraordinary attempt to rewrite political and economic history. When it comes to political and economic history, I would rather rely upon the advice of the International Monetary Fund and upon the advice of the Treasury. What they say is something quite different to anything that appears in the member for Higgins’s book. They do record the reckless spending of the member for Higgins, the legacy of which was high inflation and high interest rates. In fact, there were some extraordinary revelations last week in the Australian Financial Review about what the IMF had to say about the member for Higgins. Paul Cleary summed them up in the Australian Financial Review this way:

The result of this outbreak of bad policy in the last years of the Howard government is likely to be a long period of inflation and weak economic growth, and it may take some considerable time, and pain, to get the balance back in the right order.

That was the conclusion of all the work provided by the IMF about the member for Higgins. But of course there is no chapter in his book about inflation hitting 16-year highs and there is no chapter in his book about 10 interest rate rises on his watch. The problem here—and this just goes to the heart of the negligence of those opposite—is that it was not as if the member for Higgins had not been warned. He was warned; we now know that from executive minutes from the Treasury. He was warned way back in April 2005. This is what they had to say:

With the factors affecting monetary policy being finely balanced, any economic impacts flowing from the May budget are likely to be an important consideration for the RBA board in coming months.

That was the warning to the then Treasurer about what the likely impact would be of the reckless spending from those on the other side of the House. But it gets worse. This is what the Treasury advised the member for Higgins in November 2006—

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