Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

If you believe any of that, Mr Deputy Speaker, you must have had the Senator Doug Cameron lobotomy he says members of the backbench in the Labor Party have to have. If you have watched federal politics for the last 10 years you would understand that so much of what the Leader of the Opposition just said is completely at odds with the position of the Labor Party in government. Of course, we do not accept that they believe any of what the Leader of the Opposition just said because we know from history that when they were in government they did the exact opposite.

We know the member for McMahon's position on company tax cuts—company tax cuts for small and medium Australian businesses that this government has passed. Those tax cuts for small and medium Australian family-owned and operated businesses mean that they will have more money in their pockets to pay the very wages that the Leader of the Opposition talks about.

There is only one kind of wage the Leader of the Opposition means when he talks about wages, and that is increasing government wages. We know that when they were in government they blew the budget sky high. We are supposed to believe that the Labor Party now cares about debt and deficit—that they suddenly discovered a long-lost care for the debt and the deficit. If we had continued spending at the same rate as the Australian Labor Party it would not be half a trillion, it would be $1 trillion of debt. If the Labor Party had stayed in office and continued spending like drunken sailors, it would be $1 trillion. This is the only government—that of the Liberal and National parties—that has proposed savings and cuts and has delivered them.

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