Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It is certainly relevant to the question and the question of child care, and I thank the member for O’Connor for his interjection—his point of order. I presume the member for Indi is grateful as well, because he is one member of the House who makes her look good. On the question of the transcript this morning, the member for Indi, when asked about the opposition’s plans for child care, was asked, ‘What should the government do?’ She said, ‘Firstly, the government should outline its contingency plan.’ The journalist said, ‘No, what do you suggest the government should do?’ to see if she had any plans. Then the member for Indi said, ‘Well, that’s up to Ms Gillard to tell us how she’s going to respond.’ Then the journalist said to the member for Indi, ‘You would have thought about the issues; what do you think should be done?’ and she said ‘Well, Ms Gillard needs to come up with a sustainable model,’ and the journalist said in frustration, ‘No, no, I am not asking about Ms Gillard’s opinion,’ in yet another desperate attempt to elicit from the member for Indi something that might look like a Liberal policy for child care. Then, extraordinarily, having been pressed and pressed again for a policy on child care, the member for Indi said in respect of me that I should have acted 12 months ago on this. The member for Indi might like to remember the Liberal Party was in government 12 months ago. Maybe they should have acted on it, yes, but she can hardly say that that is something for the current government.

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