Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Late last year there was a change of government in this country, and I suspect that the people of Australia have been sitting around waiting to see what the nature of this new government is. Six months later, they have their answer. Quite frankly, this is all there is. The government’s first budget has been delivered under the most fortuitous circumstances for any new government in the history of this country, and this is all that we get from the new Rudd government.

The previous speaker asked what we were doing when we were in government, so I would like to take an opportunity to remind him of what we were doing, because it goes to the heart of the favourable circumstances that have faced this government since they came into office. What were we doing when we were in office? Paying off Labor’s debt, creating two million jobs, keeping inflation low and keeping interest rates low. We halved the rate of long-term unemployed. We doubled net household wealth. That is a pretty good record, and this is the economy that the Labor Party has now inherited. Wayne Swan is the luckiest incoming Treasurer in the history of Australia, and that is a fact.

What we have seen from this government—and we saw it prior to when they were elected—is claims that they were going to put grocery prices, petrol prices and our mortgages at the heart of what they do. This was going to be ‘core business’, as the Prime Minister always says. In fact, in the Australian this year the Prime Minister said that, when it comes to grocery prices and food prices, ‘The buck stops with me’. His Treasurer said very similar things. In fact, apparently the Treasurer has been conducting grocery price watches in his own electorate since 1993.

So we have a new Prime Minister, we have a new Treasurer, and at the heart of what they are going to do for the Australian people is controlling the cost of living. So in their first big policy document that they have brought down in this place for the Australian people, what do we have about easing cost-of-living pressures—this core business of the new Rudd government? We have three lines in the budget speech. What they say is that there are legitimate community concerns about the increasing price of groceries and petrol—we all know that; this Prime Minister has a habit of stating the absolute obvious. Then they say they will have the ACCC look at it and they will introduce a failed FuelWatch scheme. That is line number two. Line number three in this budget document about controlling cost-of-living pressures is that they are going to expand financial counselling services to help families better manage their finances. That is three lines from the main policy document of this new government about something that they have been telling the Australian people is core business.

What would help Australians control their budgets is for the new government to do something about rising grocery prices and rising petrol prices that works. Instead what we get is a budget that will drive up inflation. We get a budget that is increasing taxes and we get a budget that is going to be a record spend for any Australian government. They are increasing the cost of air travel in this budget. They are increasing the cost of the passenger movement charge. They are increasing the cost of passports. They are increasing the cost of alcohol. They are increasing the cost of motor vehicles. All of these will drive up inflation. Somebody obviously has not told the Treasurer that raising prices will drive up inflation. And worse, there are measures within this budget that will go to the heart of this conversation today: the core business that the government believes that it is engaged in of controlling petrol prices and controlling grocery prices. Last night they slapped an extra tax on condensates, which will feed directly into the price of petrol.

If you want to know the nature of this new government, this budget document says everything about it. What they are prepared to do about any substantial issue is to strike a pose that they care about it and then come up with some stunt about it. Then they will blithely move onto the next thing without ever achieving any results on what they have set themselves to do. A high taxing, high spending, old-fashioned Labor budget will not help—(Time expired)

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