Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is the problem—it is dinosaurs. It is a really narrow way of thinking. When we have the debate on economics and the opposition talks about debt and deficit, all you hear is, ‘The burden that is being placed on our children’ or ‘$9,000 for every man, woman and child!’ It is all this ‘burden of debt’ and gloom and doom and fear.

As we have seen this week, it has now gone from fear onto smear, and the interjections we have had to the last speaker, when the member for Flinders was talking about not being able to debate the legislation. We have spent three days in this House bogged down in a debate about an email that was false, fake and fraudulent. We have spent three days wasting taxpayers’ money in this House when we should have been putting legislation through that would move this country forward; yet, we have been bogged down in a grubby witch hunt. The only person that is really going to lose out from the whole last three days is the poor old Treasury official; I think everyone else will move on with their lives except that bloke. And we have spent three days doing it. Then we have those opposite saying, ‘We have no time to debate this’ and ‘We have no time to debate that,’ because we have just wasted so much time on this other issue that will end up coming to nothing by the end of the week. As I said, it will be one person that will pay the ultimate price for what has gone on this week. For what?

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