Page 1103 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mrs Burke: What are you doing about it?
MR STANHOPE: The first thing we did was to get rid of the government that caused the economic problem.
Mrs Burke: You did it single-handed, did you?
MR STANHOPE: The first thing that we the people of Australia—
Mrs Burke: We? The ACT Labor Party gets rid of the federal government!
MR STANHOPE: The first thing that we the people of Australia did was to get rid of the cause of the problem. And didn’t they do that in spades where the Prime Minister Mr Howard was concerned? They not only got rid of the government; they got rid of the major driver—after Peter Costello, probably, who just did not have the strength, character or capacity to stand up.
Mrs Burke: Is this relevant to the question?
MR STANHOPE: You asked. Just now you asked what we are doing. One of the things we did—
Mrs Burke: No, I am asking how you explain the decline.
MR STANHOPE: I must say that I played my small part in that particular national movement to ditch your side of politics from the national landscape completely and ensure a clean sweep, a clean slate—a decision by the people of Australia that the damage that had been done, not just to the economy but across the board, was more than could be borne.
What we did collectively was ditch him. We sent a message that it was “through your incompetence, through your management or mismanagement of the economy, through your eight interest rate rises in three years, through your $370 a month on the mortgage of a young Canberra family”. And there are the implications of that. That is $370 a month of discretionary expenditure that is no longer going into the ACT community; it is just going into the banks. It is not going into the small businesses; it is not going into the restaurants; it is not going to the bookshop; it is not being spent on sport.
If you were a businessman in this town, where even an average young family on an average mortgage had lost $370 a month from its disposable income, you would probably be a little bit shaky in terms of your confidence.
Mrs Burke: What are you doing to help, though?
MR STANHOPE: What we have done is manage our economy effectively. We have produced the strongest balance sheet of any government in Australia—it is the envy of Australia—with a strong, sustainable surplus. There is a strong balance sheet, an enviable cash position.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .