Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Has the Treasurer seen comments from finance columnist Terry McCrann, who has said Labor’s broadband proposal is ‘really quite sensible’ and ‘poses no threat to the integrity and purpose’ of the Future Fund? Treasurer, don’t these comments by Mr McCrann, who is one of Australia’s most respected columnists, underline how your attacks are overblown and driven by political desperation and frustrated leadership aspirations rather than economic logic?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not seen what Mr McCrann said, but I will go back and have a look and I will produce a list of the sayings of Chairman Terry on the member for Lilley, because he has said quite a lot of interest about the member for Lilley. Lest the member for Lilley pretend that he supports this policy, I am going to table at least 10 occasions on which the member for Lilley has demanded the Future Fund be a locked box and that no money be taken out of the Future Fund. For example, on 7 November 2005:

It has to be a locked box. We have to make the Future Fund a locked box.

…            …            …

We’d like to see parliamentary oversight and complete transparency. It’s very important there is public confidence in the Future Fund and that it is a locked box that can’t be raided by the National Party …

Let me get this straight: the Future Fund can’t be raided by the National Party because the Labor Party is going to get there first! My goodness, what sort of a principle is that? These people are a group of tomb raiders: burglary 1, burglary 2 and burglary 3—accessory before the fact, the bloke who did it and accessory after the fact. Let us go to 18 August 2005, when the whole point of the Future Fund was to have budget surpluses and the proceeds of assets put in the hands of ‘independent experts and locked away in a box’. Who is the independent expert who is going to take the money, $2.7 billion, and put it into their election projects? None other than the opposition leader. Some independent expert! Let us hope for the sake of future Australian generations that Labor never gets elected. If Labor gets elected, I figure sometime in about 2015 or 2020, when the ageing of the population crunches down on this country, when a $140 billion liability comes and it has to be met, nobody is going to be sitting around saying, ‘Let’s thank Kevin Rudd for raiding this, for mortgaging our future for his grubby election promises back in 2007.’

Mr Speaker, I table just a sampling of the list. There are only 10 quotes on that particular press release, but we will be finding a lot more.