Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

All that we are left with is the poor, old, sad member for Perth, left here by herself in the chamber, ranting and raving. What a pathetic performance from the opposition!

Why is this legislation so important? In this government, we do not inherit a blank piece of paper. Every government that comes to office inherits the good work or the mess of the previous government. We know what happened when the previous Labor government, the Rudd-Gillard-Greens government, was elected to office. We know they inherited an annual budget running $20 billion in surplus. That is what they inherited. When they inherited, not only did we have no net debt, this nation had $45 billion in the bank account, and we, as the nation, were actually earning interest on that money that the Howard-Costello government had put away for a rainy day. There was $1 billion flowing into the national accounts that we could use as increased spending in all sorts of areas. That was the legacy the previous Labor government inherited.

Fast forward six years and what have we, as the coalition, inherited? In almost every portfolio we see mess after mess, disaster after disaster. But probably the greatest disaster is what they have done to the budget. I would like to go through some of the numbers of the budget so we know why this legislation on repeal day is so important. We often talk about billions of dollars worth of debt and how much of a mess we are actually in. But I think perhaps another way to put it is: how much more did the previous Labor government overspend because the nation was simply running at a loss for six years? In every one of the six budgets they spent more money than they raised. The reason was their excess spending, their waste, their incompetence and their mismanagement on a Whitlamesque scale. Over those six years there was a 50 per cent increase in spending. So the spending was the problem, not the revenue.

If we look at the 2008-09 budget, the Labor government overspent by 10 per cent. In 2009-10, they overspent by 18 per cent. In 2010-11, they again overspent by 17 per cent. In the following year, 2011-12, it was a 12 per cent overspend. In 2012-13, it was a 13 per cent overspend. What we inherited is, again, more than a 10 per cent overspend. What happens when the government overspends? They quickly whittled away that $45 billion that they had inherited. They quickly whittled that away and they had to start to cover the losses. Because they were running this nation at a loss, they had to borrow the money. They had to borrow the money, and most of the money they borrowed was from overseas.

The first job that we, as the incoming government, have is to pay the interest on the debt. Currently, that is running at $13.5 billion every single year. We must find over $1 billion a month. Instead of giving it to schools or to infrastructure or to aged care or to hospitals or to kids with disabilities, we have to take that money from the taxpayer and use that to simply pay the interest on the debt, and the sad thing is that that $13½ billion does not even repay one cent of the principle that they borrowed. It is simply an interest-only repayment. So we have to continue to pay the interest bill almost forever, until we get the budget into surplus and we start to whittle away that $300 billion plus debt that this previous Labor government left us with.

It was not just the financial mess. We know they tied the hands of small business with their red tape because they think that you can micromanage the economy to get the best results. Despite 200 years of economic history showing that this is a nonsense, that is still the mantra of the current Labor opposition—get in there, control the levers, give everyone instructions and directions—because they do not have trust in the citizens of Australia. They do not have trust in the small businesses of Australia to get out there and to grow the economy. They simply believe that the government and the bureaucracies know best. That is why they love red tape. But we know that that hurts productivity, it deters investment and it costs jobs.

That is exactly what the figures show. In 2013 our productivity actually went backwards. If we are going to fund all of the things that we want to fund for the future of this nation, if we want to fund a national disability insurance scheme, the only way we are going to be able to do that is to increase the productivity of this nation. We have to increase our productivity. That simply means doing more with less. Every single business in the private sector understands doing more with less.

When we come to rankings—just to see where we are in the global sphere and what we inherited—on the ranking of burden of government regulation from the World Economic Forum Global Competitive Index of 148 nations, where do you think Australia ranks? According to the World Economic Forum, after six years of this mob, we rank 124th out of 148 countries. We are still behind Colombia and Spain, but the good news is that we are in front of Iran. Congratulations to the previous government—124th and we are actually ahead of Iran. What an amazing effort!

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

What we have seen—which the member for Perth would well know is the result of the policies that she favours—is probably the biggest decline in small business in our nation's history. What they managed to do, while they were going through their revolving door of small business ministers, was decrease small business in this nation. Today there are close to 500,000 fewer people employed in small business than there were when the previous Labor government came to office. The most disturbing fact is that we are seeing fewer people wanting to start their own business. That is one of the most disturbing economic statistics we inherited from the previous Labor government. They deterred people with their red tape, mismanagement and Labor ideology. They deterred people from going out, taking a risk and starting up a small business. Shame! Absolute shame!

On the specifics of this bill, schedule 1 amends the requirements for employer reporting of superannuation contributions on payslips. There are already existing requirements under the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Fair Work Regulations 2009 for employers to include on payslips the amount of superannuation contributions they are liable make. But that was not enough for the previous Labor government. They wanted more regulation on top of that to try and create more work for our small business people.

While I am on this topic of superannuation and red tape, I bring the House's attention to a gentleman called Mr Bracegirdle. His case was provided as evidence to the recent royal commission into trade unions. Mr Bracegirdle worked for Toll. I have the utmost respect for the people who work in our road transport industry. Driving a truck is one of the hardest, most difficult and dangerous jobs we have in our nation, and they deserve all the support that we can give them. Mr Bracegirdle, like every Australian, simply wanted to get the best return from his superannuation fund. He wanted to be free to decide where to put the superannuation money that he had earned. He looked at the TWU union super fund and thought:

I just didn't think that TWU super was stacking up as well as some of the commercial organisations, some of the banks and things.

What he wanted was freedom of choice, freedom to decide to put his superannuation money with a fund other than the one he was being told to put it in—simple freedom of choice—but red tape got to him.

He went to his employer, Toll, and was told: 'You don't get a choice.' Toll's pay officer then said that, if he wanted to challenge that, he would have to see his union delegate. He went to the union delegate and the union delegate told him it was not possible for him to choose where he put his superannuation money—it had to go to the TWU superannuation fund.

Then he went to his local member, Mr Stephen Smith, who in turn went to the minister for superannuation at the time—the member for McMahon, Mr Bowen. The letter he got back from the member for McMahon stated:

Employees who receive employer superannuation contributions under a collective agreement are not eligible for choice of fund.

We have such red tape in our superannuation sector that an employee can earn that money—it is his money—which the government requires him to put into superannuation, and then have his union step in and tell him: 'You do not have freedom of choice. You must put that money into a TWU fund.' Just imagine if we had a requirement that you had to spend 10 per cent of the money you earned at only one supermarket, one clothing store or one restaurant. We would consider such red tape an absurdity. But we have this red tape currently in our country today on superannuation—coercive red tape. This is a further example of the work we must do.

While I am on the subject of red tape—and I have talked about the Whitlam incompetence and how so much money was wasted—with the release of the Australian National Audit Office report, The Design and Conduct of the Third and Fourth Funding Rounds of the Regional Development Australia Fund, we have found that not only was there massive debt and waste and incompetence but also that that debt was run up through rorts. That is all you can call the Regional Development Australia Fund. That money was simply rorted by the previous Labor government and pork-barrelled into marginal electorates—a complete rort. Billions of dollars were misappropriated from the taxpayer to promote Labor Party members.

In the remaining time, I would like to read some of the key points of the audit. One hundred and six funding applications were deemed not recommended for funding, to which the Audit Office gave the acronym NRF. The independent advisory panel did not recommend them to be funded, but the minister at the time decided that she would fund 14 of them, at a cost to the taxpayer of $87 million.

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