Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

You know why these sorts of problems arise? It comes from a story which Nick Xenophon told to Katharine Murphy for her Quarterly Essay. She talked about a moment when Nick Xenophon asked the Prime Minister if he would like to catch up for a coffee. Nick Xenophon said:

He looked at me askance and said, 'What for?' I said just to catch up and have a chat about issues. He said, 'No, mate. I'm purely transactional.'

That's what we've got, a purely transactional Prime Minister who has delivered a budget with a trillion dollars of debt and no reform to show for it. This government is like Seinfeld,a show about nothing but without the laughs.

A government member interjecting—

That's not me. That's the right-wing Spectator magazine speaking about you. That's what your friends are saying about you.

There is a better way. In 1945 Curtin and Chifley didn't just say, 'Let's put the country back the way it was in 1939.' Instead they had a bit of ambition. As Liam Byrne reports in his book Becoming John Curtin and James Scullin: 'Curtin pledged that under his government Australia would not just win the war, but win the peace too. There would be investment in social services, new housing to replace the old slums, new opportunities to be pursued and full employment for the benefit of all.' It was a vision of what Australia could be. It was based upon the belief that if the government could expand its power and influence over the workings of the economy and society to mobilise the nation to win the war, then it could do so to ensure the social betterment of all. As Liam Byrne has said: 'The Curtin government moulded the age. It actively created a new era, transforming our economy, our politics and our society. It defied the inherited orthodoxies and expanded the bounds of the possible.' That is what ambition looks like. That is what a reforming government would be doing today to ensure that wages went up, not down; to ensure that we had a more egalitarian nation, not a less egalitarian nation; to ensure that we tackled climate change, which will hit Australia harder than any other advanced country; to see improvements in productivity, in business startup rates; to create a better Australia. Australia deserves a bold budget, not the flaccid financial statement we got last night.

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