Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

You can start with the carbon tax, that is the obvious one. It is a key policy. Or you could start with their deficits, their debt—it does not matter where you go. You could start with the latest one of a pecuniary interest for Mr Thomson. We are trying to find out who knew what in the Labor Party and who paid the bills. You cannot believe anything they say any more. It is one of those absurd things where we have to go through the ritual of asking the questions and then realising that there is nothing they say that you can trust.

The honour of office has been desecrated, destroyed and we are just going through a ritual until we get to the election. The election is coming. We went through this ritual in Queensland as well, but at least in Queensland, I would have to say, Ms Bligh had respect. There were people who thought that there was something slightly honourable about the way she was working.

Going back to exactly where we are: our gross deposition on market value was $265.84 billion by 30 June this year. It is just fantastic. I do not deny that you did not start with a gross deposition but it was about $58 billion. It has just taken off. Then we have to rely on the trust that you can somehow bring the show back under control. But notice that our gross deposition keeps heading north, even with your own figures. You are telling us about surpluses. The reason you do that is that you are banging things on the capital account but you are not booking your impairment value. So in every way we go around your books they are just a load of absolute tripe.

What do Australians see at present? How do they get a sense of confidence? We walk into the restaurant called the Australian Labor Party. We are greeted at the door by the maitre d', the Speaker of the House, Peter Slipper, and he sits you down at the table. Out the back you have the cook, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Not one thing she says is on the menu ever turns up, not one. There is not one thing you can believe. It does not matter what you buy; it will not turn up. And whatever you buy is going to cost vastly more than is on the menu. Have a look at the accountant, Mr Swan. This restaurant has had the four biggest losses in our nation's history. It now has the biggest debt in our nation's history. The entertainment? I do not know who you put down for the entertainment. I suppose Craig Thomson. The member for Dobell is the entertainment.

You can see it is not something that we placed on you. You guys—the Labor Party—placed it on yourselves. You did it to yourselves. The one thing that never lies is debt. Debt never lies. It does not matter how you cut it or dice it, you just have to pay it back. When you are up to $300 billion in debt—no doubt that is where you will get to—then you will come back with some other spurious excuse, just like the three previous times, about why you have to extend it. There will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth about how something went wrong and how we have to borrow more money. There was the ridiculous effort of the finance minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, who could not even nominate the nation's peak debt position. It was excruciating to sit here during question time, having asked the question, and have a palaver of percentages of GDP and net debt. We asked a simple question and we cannot get it.

We know that the competency to manage the economy is just not there and that every day the task gets harder. Every day the calibre of the people who are supposed to be managing it comes more under question. We did not put the country in this position; you did. Now you are desperately calling out, saying, 'Tonight, Tony Abbott must tell us how to fix our shop.' It is your shop and you made the mess. It is not a mess we made. The first thing we have to do to fix this mess is to get rid of them. (Time expired)