Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) Share this | Hansard source

Well, dear oh dear! I think both sides of the chamber here can sense that there's something a little bit lacklustre about the opposition at the moment. I don't know whether it's because the opposition leader isn't performing the way they might have expected or whether it's because they don't seem to be able to land any new policy positions or indeed jettison any of their old policy positions, given how hopelessly divided they are. But, regardless of the reason, the evidence here is that, out of all of the topics they could have chosen to speak about today, the very best they could come up with was to talk the economy down. They are talking the economy down.

The economic brains trust of the Labor Party, such as it is, no longer officially includes Wayne Swan. He left, presumably on a high, after delivering Australia a record debt and precisely none of the four economic surpluses he announced on that fateful starry night. The brains trust probably no longer includes the member for McMahon now either. His star was waning after he invited the Australian people not to vote for the Labor Party if they didn't like all of their new and higher taxes, and we know that many people followed that advice.

Yet the legacy of Wayne Swan lives on, and the legacy of the member for McMahon lives on, embodied in the supposedly rising star of the member for Rankin over there. I think it was so relevant that the member for Rankin chose to speak, in his presentation just before this, on the topic of self-regard, because the member for Rankin was policy adviser and chief of staff to Wayne Swan. He was sitting at Swanny's knee, presumably giving him all of that helpful advice about how to blow the budget, and about the carbon tax, the mining tax, the school halls, the pink batts scheme and all of the other bright ideas they came out with in that period. The member for Rankin was also next to the member for McMahon in the lead-up to the last election, as Labor announced their retirement tax, their housing tax and their family business taxes. The member for Rankin said that he was proud of those policies and that he was pleased with them.

I don't want to give too much advice to the opposition on economic policy, but I did hear something very relevant on the weekend. It was when the Prime Minister noted that sometimes we can apply the 'George Costanza principle' to the economic advice and economic policies of Wayne Swan and the Labor Party. In other words, when the opposition; the Labor president, Wayne Swan; or his acolyte, the member for Rankin, is saying something, that is a pretty strong argument that you should do the opposite.

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