Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (15:36): Deputy Speaker, imagine someone who calls themselves an economic conservative, someone who comes to government on the basis that they've promised they'll be prudent, responsible and keep the budget in balance. And then imagine that the first chance they get, rather than delivering on their plan of being prudent and responsible, they tear it up and embrace the opportunity to spend, spend, spend and take no responsibility. Let's imagine somebody like that. You'd have to say they're either a hypocrite or a fraud, or both. But then sometimes they go even further and they invent their own economic concepts in the process. You may have heard, Deputy Speaker, of the broken window fallacy. Well, there are Labor Party members who believe in the 'burning down the house fallacy', because what they did when they were previously in government, when they came to government on the basis that they were economic conservatives, was go down a pathway of spending recklessly, tearing down school halls and rebuilding school halls to generate economic activity. They literally invested in burning down the houses of Australians as a pathway to show that they were, allegedly, economically conservative. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): The member for Goldstein, take your seat. The member for Sydney, on a point of order. Ms Plibersek: I think the member for Goldstein should withdraw those comments. People did lose their lives. That was tragic, and you should not be making political points about it in the way you are. It's disgraceful. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Sydney can take her seat. I'm listening very, very closely and I've heard the member for Goldstein make comments that are sailing very— Ms Plibersek: They've got families. Mr TIM WILSON: Exactly! The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Goldstein can take his seat. The member for Goldstein, I'm listening very closely to what you say, and any direct comments to the opposition are unparliamentary. If you make comments relating to a program that caused an event, that may pass the test. But what you're saying is very, very close to being unparliamentary. Continue. Mr TIM WILSON: So we'll go through and highlight the absurdity of many of the claims that are made by opposition members in this chamber and the programs that they sought to implement. Some members have talked about the tragic human consequences—I couldn't agree more—that occurred on the basis of reckless, reckless policy. For members opposite to come into this chamber and lecture members of the government, who have delivered year-on-year economic growth, sustained economic growth, and, against the backdrop of the drought and the fires, have continued to deliver strong economic growth, is outrageous. The reality is that in the last quarter of last year, despite the headwinds of the droughts and the fires, we have been able to continue to deliver. Let's not pretend otherwise. We are facing very difficult economic circumstances. As the assistant minister said at the dispatch box before, we know that a health crisis is turning into a significant economic challenge for the Australian people. It is because we are exposed as an economy to many of the countries that are directly affected by the coronavirus. It is going to affect our supply chains. We face the very real challenge where many businesses have willing customers but not the stock, where service based businesses want to sell but are reliant on things like tourism and struggle to be able to get customers. These are the challenges that we're responding to. The question for us is: what choice was before the Australian people at the last election? They made a choice about the type of prudent and responsible government they wanted, one that could come into this chamber and pass a budget which cut taxes and empowered Australians to continue to support the economy, for small businesses who invest to be able to build the future of this country. Or the alternative, of $387 billion worth of new taxes that was proposed by the opposition. They made a choice because they knew what drove the fundamentals of the Australian economy and put us in the position to respond to exactly these types of crises, to make sure that we're in the position so that we can respond in a targeted way to keep jobs and businesses open to grow this nation— (Time expired)