Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers given by the Minister for Finance to questions asked by senators Ketter and Brown. Just last September, Innes Willox, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group said:

So we would hope the Government will be able to put together a coherent narrative around the sort of principles that we talked about at the reform summit …

He must be very disappointed. Poor Mr Willox! He must be very disappointed with the last five months, because what we have seen instead is not a coherent narrative—not even a coherent set of proposals. In fact we have seen no coherence. We have seen no narrative. We have not even seen any principles by which the debate around tax ought to be conducted. And we certainly have not seen any ideas.

We are in the most strange position of having an opposition that, well before an election, has a fully costed set of policies on the table and a government with no policies at all. Most people who are watchers of Australian politics will understand that this is a most unusual situation. It is not ordinarily how Australian politics is conducted, but it seems that there is a very strange set of apparently deliberate decisions made by this government not to put anything on the table whatsoever. They are essentially an opposition in exile. Perhaps to misquote the Prime Minister, 'There has never been a more exciting time to be a small target government,' because this is a group of people who are completely unwilling to put anything on the table at all.