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

funding more hospitals services and providing more affordable medicines—again, all part of our economic plan. The strong economic plan that our government is delivering is continuing to deliver jobs, growth and prosperity.

I know those opposite wish—are pleading, in fact—that people around Australia and in this chamber stop thinking about and talking about their policies. My advice to those opposite is: if you want people to stop talking about your policies and criticising your policies, get some better policies. I'm going to ignore their pleas.

I want to consider for a moment the verdict delivered by the Australian people on the plan that Labor took to the last election. We know what was at the heart of that plan: retiree taxes, housing taxes and a plan to make every Australian pay more for electricity. In fact, we know a lot more after the election than we did before about what even those opposite think about the economic policies they have on offer. In the immortal words of the member for Corio, Labor's plan was all about 'handouts rather than hope'. As the member for Hunter astutely put it, 'Somewhere along the way Labor stopped talking to its blue-collar base.' We also now know that Labor had some quite hidden economic policies, involving cash stuffed into Aldi shopping bags and cardboard boxes.

Opposition members interjecting—

Maybe, over the interjections, those opposite could clarify whether those bags of cash constitute their fiscal policies or their monetary policies.

But it gets even better. It now seems that the opposition have more policies than they know what to do with—their policy cup floweth over. Barely a week goes by when we don't hear another one of the members opposite come forward to make a headland speech proposing to drag their party in a bold new direction. I suspect the member for Rankin offers such a plan. The member for Hunter certainly has such a plan; he is calling for a 'sensible settlement' with the government. And their former leader, the member for Maribyrnong, has also helpfully added, in terms of his plan:

If Labor didn't change some of its points of view then that would be showing that we hadn't learned the lessons from the election.

All of these wannabe Labor leaders, including the member for Rankin opposite, have been running around the country delivering these headland speeches. No headland in Australia, it seems, will be safe whenever the opposition leader either is out of the country or turns his back.

In the meantime, the government is getting on with the job. We are implementing our economic plan. We are managing the economy. We are delivering record spending on infrastructure. We are delivering those city and regional deals. We are delivering record funding on essential services. And we are creating the jobs, the growth and the prosperity that this country desperately needs and is receiving. If the member for Rankin and those opposite say that they don't know about our government's plan then I suppose it just proves the point, fundamentally, that they're not paying attention to what's happening in this place. They're not paying attention to the results of the recent election.

Ms Murphy interjecting—

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