Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

He goes, ‘Oh, terrific.’ The headline on page 4 is ‘Liberals vow to slash public spending’, until he nearly choked on his breakfast doughnut because there beside it on page 5, is ‘Senate votes down $1.9bn health cuts’. That is the rabble that those opposite have become. They announce a steely determination to put forward fiscal restraint and then knock off a saving in the Senate. They simply cannot be taken seriously.

Let us look at the saving they knocked off in the Senate. They say they have got priorities. If they have got priorities we know where they lie because they knocked off the saving whereby low-income workers and middle-income workers subsidise the health insurance of very high income earners. We certainly know what their priorities are: to crash the economy and to tilt the playing field against people on modest incomes. That is very clear. They do not have a policy; they just have an interview in the Australian newspaper. They want to whinge about debt and then vote against savings, because they do not have an alternative policy. They have got an interview posing as a policy and that is simply it. That is how bankrupt they have become. In contrast, we on this side of the House do have a medium-term fiscal strategy. We are determined to support the Australian economy when it needs it, to withdraw stimulus in a timely way when private demand returns and to put in place our medium-term fiscal strategy. Those on the other side of the House are simply a rabble.

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