Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know quite often those on the other side don't listen to the answers to the questions they put to our ministers, so I just want to remind you, when you come in and manipulate the information and figures to suit your own political ends: in this data today, Senator Gallagher said, 'we have seen the strongest economic growth across the economy—broad-based growth as explained by the ABS for the strongest growth in three years'. They're actually the facts. But I think what the Australian people very much understand about those opposite is that what they say to them in the community and what they do in here are often very different things.

It is in your political playbook to ask questions about the debt, but you never actually accept the debt you left. You never accept the high inflation when you left office. The responsibility of a good opposition is to learn from the mistakes they made when they were in government, but you haven't learnt anything. If you had in fact learnt anything from the worst defeat of the Liberal Party's history at the last election—if you had learnt anything at all during that time about running the economy, about being there for the Australian people—you would not have rewarded the leaders of that election campaign strategy, that economic strategy, who are now the leaders of your party. That says to me and to the Australian community that you haven't learnt anything.

In the almost 10 years you were in government, how many surpluses were there? I can't remember how many surpluses you delivered.