Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to the government's broken promise never to do deals with minor parties. Why is the Treasurer willing to cut pensions and family payments but not rule out, as I did this morning, using taxpayers' money to bankroll the Palmer piggybank?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we do is allow the parliament, as it chooses, to have its inquiries and not predetermine the outcomes. I have made it very clear that our principles are always going to be focused on not supporting initiatives that engage in private sector activities. I wish the same could be said for the member for McMahon. I was kind of expecting this question from the member for McMahon. I thought, hang on, they have been bleating about this so-called Palmer piggybank—for crying out loud.

It was the Labor Party that started the Ruddbank. Of course, it was in March 2009 that the then Labor government tried to give millions of dollars of financing, through Ruddbank, to the 79-floor office building in Brisbane, ironically called 'Vision Tower'. It should have been called 'Mirage Tower' because two months later the company went into voluntary administration. I thought, hang on, no current member of the front bench of the Labor Party would ever support an initiative such as this. They would not do that, surely. Bear with me Australia. On 2GB, Chris Smith was interviewing a frontbencher and he said:

So you will be supporting the proposed 'Rudd Bank' …

Chris Bowen said:

Yes, we think the Australian Business Investment Partnership is very important …

That is what they called the bank, the Australian Business Investment Partnership, ABIP—a bank, Ruddbank. Here they come, in opposition, to the parliament and ask us to rule out speculation put forward by the independent member for Fairfax about a proposal that may or may not ever receive the support of this parliament. Yet, the Labor Party, as complete hypocrites when they were in government, tried desperately to establish a Ruddbank, a bank that would actually lend money to businesses that failed only a couple of months later.

So I would say to you: spare us the hypocrisy. All Australia asks of the modern Labor Party is to have some principles, to be a little consistent and to actually hold a value from government to opposition. We know that we have a Leader of the Opposition who is loyal to no-one and has no principles. But surely on this occasion, given the whole history of the Labor Party with bad banks—from Tricontinental to Ruddbank—the Labor Party is going to go beyond the sanctimony of this.