PM Transcripts

Fax from : 15/ 05/ 97 28: 38 Pg:
MAY 15 ' 97 20: 32 P. 12
PRIME MINISTER
LABOR KNOCKS, BUT NO ANSWERS
After thirteen long years of ruining Australia in government, Labor in opposition has
been reduced to knocing and whingeing.
The Opposition Leader's Budget reply tonight was the proof.
Now that the Coalition Government has set a plan to save and build for Australia's
future, Kim Beazley's responsibility was to put aside the predictable rhetorical bluster
and tell the Australian people whether he would support the Coalition's solutions.
There was no answer on:
whether he will support a programme to pay back Keating Labor debt for the sake
of our children's future;,
whether he will support the * firstc* o mpreliensivi tax break for savings in Australia's
history; whether he will now belatedly and unreservedly support the greatest investment in
improving nation's environmental capital;
whether he will support the Federation Fund for real jobs and our country's
infrastructure; or
Whether he will support the first legislative guarantee to lock in the indexation of
pensions to 25 per cent of male total average weekly earnings.
Kim Beazley can't afford to have an each way bet on Budget measures, either
deliberately, or through lack of control over his Senate Colleagues, as he did with the
superannuation surcharge on high income earners.
ir Beazley has to take a stand.
The old Labor way of high taxation and wasteful spending was decisively rejected in
March last year.
By failing to reassure the people that Labor supports efficient government and lower
tax, Kim Beazley's Budget response tonight demonstrates agaiu that Labor has failed
to listen, let alone learn, mainstream Australia's message at the last election.
May 1997