Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I was mentioning Milton Friedman to make the point that in fact what the member for North Sydney said yesterday was not literally accurate, not precisely correct, because there are indeed a few select economists that he and the opposition do listen to—a few people like Arthur Laffer, John Taylor and Milton Friedman. And they just happen to be the people who believe that tax cuts for wealthy people and knocking over the rights of working people in the workplace are the solution to every economic problem. It does not matter what the issue, it does not matter what the debate, the answer is always: tax cuts for the rich and knocking over the rights of working people in the workplace.

It is not surprising, therefore, to hear the views of the member for North Sydney on Sunrise this morning, where he stated:

Broadly based tax cuts will provide long-term incentives for people to continue to work.

I wonder which people that would be. For the ordinary working people I know, their incentives to continue to work are to eat, to pay the rent and the mortgage. They do not need big tax cuts for the wealthy in order to have an incentive to work; they have to work.

It is hardly surprising that the Leader of the Opposition and his troops cannot make up their minds about whether Australia is going to have a recession or not. The Leader of the Opposition says that a recession is avoidable, that it may not happen. And yet we have had within the space of a couple of days the member for Sturt, the member for Curtin, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and the member for Warringah all saying that it is a red-hot certainty that Australia is going into recession. It may well be just a coincidence, but I think all three of them are Costello supporters; I think they may all be supporters of the member for Higgins. The government in turn is interested in expert advice—

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