In a speech designed to stake election battle-lines, and stoke election fears, the Minister for Finance, Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann, laid down an overt economic challenge to the Opposition, characterising the Opposition’s policies as more aligned with East Germany than a western democracy.
Australia needs policies for opportunity, not @billshortenmp politics of envy. Speech @ Sydney Institute last night: https://t.co/eZd44br3Fo
— Mathias Cormann (@MathiasCormann) August 23, 2017
In the most brazen personal attack on the Opposition Leader since the days he was giving evidence before the Hon Dyson Heydon AC QC in the Trade Union Royal Commission, the Minister accused the Opposition Leader of moving Labor back to the era of socialism by delivering more than $150 billion worth of new taxes over the next decade.
In a speech at the Sydney Institute, the Minister said of the Opposition Leader “as he looks ahead to the next election, he has made the deliberate and cynical political judgment that enough Australians have forgotten the historical failure of socialism”.
The Minister’s speech, perhaps timely given the Government is seeking an opportunity to reset the economic agenda away from same-sex marriage and citizenship, warned about “Shortenomics” which the Minister claimed was a “recipe for economic decline and social division”.
