Subject: Labor response to the Budget
E&OE ..............................
REPORTER:
Mr Beazley says the Budget is in fact in $2.1 million deficit. Do you think his figures are right?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well not only are his figures wrong, but having said we've got a deficit he then proceeds to promise to spend more money. This was a budget reply completely devoid of any content. He's had five budget replies as Opposition Leader, and he has no alternative economic strategy. It's easy to criticise your opponent, it's much harder to come up with a solid alternative policy. He has none, he delivered none tonight it was just a spray of rhetorical pollie speak. He didn't offer any concrete alternative economic strategy and therefore it fails every test for an Opposition Leader's response
REPORTER:
But the Coalition never spelt out its election policy or its economic strategy this far out from an election did it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it did actually. I can remember delivering replies that spelt out quite a lot of alternatives. Quite a lot of the. . . this is actually worse than last year's reply, it had absolutely nothing of a concrete alternative. Now he's been there for five years now, his responsibility is to produce an alternative. He wants to be Prime Minister instead of me, he's got a responsibility to produce an alternative economic strategy and he didn't do that tonight and it was his one great opportunity of the year.
REPORTER:
Isn't he being responsible though in saying that he can't commit to roll-back without knowing what the costs will be in the budget position?
PRIME MINISTER:
No he's lacking political courage.
REPORTER:
In 1994, Peter Costello said that far out from an election he wasn't going to spell out the Coalition's policy that he had to wait much closer to the election. So isn't Kim Beazley doing exactly that?
PRIME MINISTER:
No because in 1994 you knew we had an alternative industrial relation's policy, you knew we had an alternative policy on privatisation, you knew we had a lot of alternative policies. He's now had five goes and he doesn't have an alternative economic strategy. This was completely devoid of any alternatives. It was just sort of a coasting, rhetorical spray at the government, not a serious alternative offered to the Australian people.
REPORTER:
Even the Government doesn't even know how much money the GST is going to provide?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes we estimated how much it will provide and it's a very solid, conservative estimate. Alex, the last thing you can accuse the Government of doing is not providing detail on tax. We provided detail on tax before the last election, we provided total detail ever since. Thank you.
[ends]