Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I know those opposite do not wish to actually debate that which is real here, which is: how do you deal with providing the stimulus which the Australian economy needs because of the global economic crisis? We have a program put forward. It is costed. The assumptions have been backed by the Treasury, and we stand by those because they represent for us a credible strategy to see Australia through this crisis.

The alternative is not just sitting on the fence, not just carping from the sidelines, but an avalanche of politically opportunistic negativity from those opposite. But here is the ultimate irony for those opposite. There they are, representing the forces of neoliberalism around the world. There they are representing the forces of unrestrained greed. There they are, representing the forces of unrestrained markets, representing the forces also represented by unprincipled merchant bankers operating with under-regulated markets—their entire ideology, which has brought this crisis about—and yet they are unprepared to lift a political finger to support this government’s efforts to deal with the consequences of that crisis. This is the ultimate irony, the ultimate hypocrisy of those opposite: the unrestrained greed, unprincipled merchant bankers, under-regulated financial markets—at the absolute core of neoliberalism—causing this crisis worldwide, and there they stand back, smugly, seeking to take political advantage of this government’s attempts to deal with the consequences of that crisis for working people. Those opposite have contested whether in fact they are really neoliberals. Remember, as the Leader of the Liberal Party has said in response to this debate on unregulated financial markets: ‘Let us simply let the market run its course.’

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