Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Having established that plenty of parts of the rest of the world are acting, having established that this government has a good jobs record—and we are always focused on the new jobs and will not accept the lazy tyranny of low expectations with an opposition that does not believe that Australia can ever compete on climate change with the rest of the world—and having also demonstrated that pensioners are getting supported and nine in 10 households will receive some form of support, if all of those four submissions have somehow failed to climb the Mount Everest of scepticism of those opposite, here is the big one.

I said at the start of my proposition that the opposition never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. When we look at some of the big calls, let us have a look at some of the big calls they have got wrong. I think that this could only assist you in believing that the coalition are making another big call which is wrong. On Work Choices we said you were going too far, and you know what? You did. In terms of Indigenous Australians we said you should say sorry to the Stolen Generations, and it took a Labor government to do it, although I recognise it was eventually with the support of all those opposite bar one or two. On the global financial crisis, you would not support the stimulus. You did not intellectually turn up to work that day, and we stimulated the economy and avoided recession. On the National Broadband Network: in 10 years time watch the revisionism from those revisionists over there, who will say it was all their idea. And look at the floods in Queensland. You did not support the levy in a time of trouble for the nation; yet we are seeing the impact of the levy building badly needed infrastructure in flood affected Australia. And you are doing it again on climate change. We were onto this when we were still in opposition, and we are implementing a clean energy future. The big one is the mining tax. All you want to do is give money back to the richest companies in Australia. (Time expired)

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