Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Now we have the shadow Treasurer interjecting. The shadow Treasurer is playing Tinkerbell rather than trying to manage the finances of the opposition, having been usurped by the shadow minister for finance. Now he is having to cope with the uncosted climate change con job of the Leader of the Opposition. We knew before today, when it comes to economic divisions in the opposition, that the division is so deep that the former Treasurer Peter Costello is on the record as saying that the Leader of the Opposition is so economically incompetent he would not have even tolerated him as his deputy.

Today, on an important economic issue of skilled migration, another division emerges. We have the Liberal senator Simon Birmingham criticising the government for not allowing enough skilled migration into the country, while the member for Bowman on the very same day comes out and criticises us for allowing too much skilled migration into the country. Not enough or too much? It is a central economic question on which the opposition are as deeply divided as they are on every other question. What this means is that members of the opposition are always available for a handy one-liner, but what they are never available for is the production of responsible, costed policies. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition, and it is a lesson as old as time: you cannot run the Australian economy if you cannot run your political party, and each and every day you fail that test—each and every day.

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