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

What we are engaged in in this debate, in this parliament and in other parliaments and other governments right across the world, is a fundamentally serious challenge: how do you deal with the global recession? And there has been a complete abandonment of truth on the part of those opposite in any real debate or exchange about what you do. In fact, what is going on here is one huge smokescreen. The smokescreen led by the member for North Sydney, led by the member for Higgins before he moves up the front here, led by the Leader of the Opposition, is that those opposite would not engage in temporary borrowing and temporary deficit and temporary debt in the face of this recession. That is what they are actually arguing. That is the pretence which exists on the part of those opposite. Everybody knows in this country, all those who follow the economic debate in this country know, that those opposite are simply trading in an absolute falsehood, an absolute pretence. It is completely disconnected from reality. It is as if they are engaging in one huge bubble-like activity here in Canberra, unconnected with what is going on in the real economy, with real families, with real communities and with other countries around the world.

Even on this question—that is, the reality of net debt and how to deal with it over time—we had the member for North Sydney go out there yesterday into no-man’s-land, and what did he do? He confirmed the Liberal Party’s debt position is $275 billion. The member for North Sydney said it would be $25 billion less. He confirmed therefore it is a $275 billion debt strategy by the Liberal Party. Yet they will seek to come in here tonight through the Leader of the Opposition and pretend that it is not like that.

I would say to those opposite that, given the gravity of the challenges faced by the nation and by those facing unemployment today, it is about time we had a bit of truth in this debate, a bit of honesty on the part of those opposite. If the Leader of the Opposition is being honest about the proposition put forward, that he does not support the level of debt and the level of deficit which the government has advanced in the budget papers, he has one responsibility, and that is to name his debt target, to name the savings that he would make as well and, through that, to demonstrate how in fact it is different from what the member for North Sydney said yesterday. It is a very simple and straightforward challenge. If he fails to do that, he sinks a stake through the heart of his own credibility and through this extraordinary fear campaign on debt, which is being mounted by those opposite, because in their heads—and, I dare say, in the hearts of those on the other side of the chamber who are a little bit honest—they know it to be an absolute falsehood as well.

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