Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Cook’s contribution is in a long line of those that we heard from the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister. It is heavy on opposition. It is heavy on negativity. It has nothing to propose at all. I would have thought the member for Cook, who is a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, may have mentioned the economy rather than trying to run down everything that he possibly could. It is typical of those opposite and what they are trying to concentrate on. They are big on fear, big on smear and that is pretty much all they have. Little wonder that we find today that Malcolm Fraser has resigned from the Liberal Party. He would be ashamed of that contribution we just heard from the member for Cook, a contribution that tried to bring out the worst in Australians, tried to divide people in terms of immigration.

Member for Cook, I do remember the 2004 campaign in Dobell and the sorts of grubby tactics used by the member for Cook, who I think at that stage was the New South Wales Liberal Party director in charge of that campaign. It is shameful that he holds those positions; it is shameful the Liberal Party are trying to rerun that divisive sort of campaign. It is a waste of this parliament’s time that he spoke for about 14 minutes in relation to immigration and divisive issues and did not once speak about any positive plans that the coalition may have. But of course it is little wonder that he did not speak positively about any coalition plans because there are none. There are none there at all. In contrast, we have a budget that is an economically sound budget, a strong budget, a budget for the future. And it has to be put into context of what the world has gone through in the past three years.

See this speech in context