Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

They laugh and they scoff in the same way they skated their way through last year with a very negative attitude to the decisive actions taken by the Rudd Labor government: to the guarantee, to the stimulus packages and to a range of other actions that were absolutely necessary to prevent Australia, like the rest of the world, plunging into a very deep recession—certainly the worst since the Great Depression.

As US President Obama has pointed out, some $5 trillion of Americans’ household wealth has evaporated in this global financial crisis. He said:

There will be those who engage in revisionist history or have selective memories and don’t seem to recall what we just went through last year.

I know he was not referring to the Liberal and National parties but I could not think of a more appropriate comparison. The Liberal and National parties have absolutely no appreciation of the level of seriousness—