Senator STERLE (Western Australia) (15:17): I do wish to make a contribution to today's debate but, before I do, I want to say that I have read a number of articles in the newspapers lately and it is amazing but there is a common theme that comes out of them, and that is, 'Be careful of what the Liberals say and what the Liberals will do.' Listening to the contributions coming from Senator Ryan and Senator Bushby today, I am absolutely confused. I hear Senator Bushby talking about jobs. I hear Senator Bushby talking about creating employment opportunities. This would be the same Senator Bushby who voted against the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan, the program that kept thousands and thousands of Australians employed through the global financial crisis. I will not say that the contribution from Senator Ryan was hysterical because it was anything but. To hear Senator Ryan talking about nation-building stuff, you might think the global financial crisis was something that we made up. For goodness sake! I do not know how far the silver spoon was shoved into Senator Ryan's mouth but if he did not realise just how close we were to recession through those last couple of years of 2009 and 2010 then I do not know what planet he was on. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have that side of the chamber bagging the living daylights out of us. They are bagging us because we spend money to create employment, bagging us because we stimulate the economy to keep people employed, bagging us because we made a massive injection of some $16.2 billion during that terrible financial time in order to keep business people employed and to build fantastic facilities for generations of young Australians to come. Here is the rub: I have been to the opening of probably 50 or 60 buildings under the Building the Education Revolution, which was a federal Labor government initiative, and, holy be, who is in the crowd getting their photos taken? Have one guess. Senator Bilyk: Who? You tell us! Senator STERLE: The member for Canning, Mr Don Randall, has been at every single one. Good on you, Don! He voted against them, but that does not matter. What an insult! Getting back to the budget: as we have been clearly told, the government is returning the budget to surplus. In one breath, we have the Liberals, ably assisted by the Nationals, bagging us for spending money to create opportunity and employment and telling us we are spending too much money. In the next breath, remembering that the government is going to deliver a surplus next year, they condemn us for not spending money. The sad thing is that, year in, year out, we have to go through this nonsense, this charade. We bring down budgets, year in, year out, and we have the same old argument. The other side of the political fence condemns every opportunity and every positive that is created by the government, but the social side actually congratulates the government, because this budget will share the benefits of the boom. As everyone knows, I come from a mining state and I fully support the mining industry. I have never said anything else. But the sad part, Mr Deputy President, is that your colleagues from Western Australian are hypocritical. We know that in Western Australia there are two speeds. There is absolutely no doubt that we have a patchwork economy. We have an industry that is thriving—it is bubbling along—and that is employing a lot of Australians, not just Western Australians. We have industries that hang off the mining industry. If they are lucky enough to be servicing the mining industry or to be otherwise involved in the mining industry, they are doing well too. But the boom is a double-edged sword and there are many industries in Western Australia that really are suffering because of it. They are suffering because they are losing experienced people. They cannot compete with the wages that are being paid in the mining industry. We have industries, such as my old industry, in which trucking families have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on building companies but have trucks parked at the back of the yard against the fence, not because they are not paying the right money but because they cannot compete. Let us look at aged-care facilities. Who would cook in an aged-care facility for $30,000 a year when you could get $130,000 at a mine? (Time expired)