Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his intervention. As the former shadow Treasurer said in 2013, Reserve Bank rates were at emergency levels. I do not know what he would make now of the fact that, now that he has moved from being shadow Treasurer to Treasurer, the Reserve Bank cash rate is lower than it then was. And in February 2013 the Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, said:

I am confident that should there be a change of government later in the year, there will be an instantaneous adrenaline charge in our economy. There will be an instantaneous surge of confidence because of an incoming government.

So much for a surge of confidence. Westpac's consumer confidence figure is seven per cent lower than it was under Labor. What this government fails to accept is that under it confidence has gone down, unemployment has gone up and we have seen debt and deficits going up. The economic numbers that should be going down are going up; the economic numbers that should be going up are going down. Perhaps it is no great surprise that the government has attempted to spin its way out of trouble. We have already heard from respected scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki about the fact that he feels abused by the way this government used him to promote the Intergenerational report. He said:

I deeply regret that I didn't get to see the full and final version—

and particularly noted its woefully inadequate treatment of the intergenerational challenge of climate change. But we have learnt recently that the problem is worse still. It is not the $11 million spend on ads that we thought it was; it is $36 million being allocated by Treasury to spend on budget and Intergenerational report promotion. At the very time when the government is complaining about a debt and deficit disaster, they are trying to spin their way out of trouble. We have a Treasurer who is at the whim of television shows, who is so fragile that it reminds his colleagues of the time just before the 2009 leadership spill where he said, 'Hey gang, I want to get your thoughts on the ETS,' when he turned to Twitter for advice on the ETS. I suspect now we have the Treasurer saying, 'Hi gang, I want to know what the deficit should be. Tweet me and let me know your views.' That is the standard of economic management we have from this Treasurer who wants to divide us into leaners and lifters, just as his Conservative counterparts in Britain are doing between strivers and skivers. For the coalition, it is all about us and them. It is about trying to divide Australians from one another, rather than trying to build a common wealth. This is a deeply dispiriting budget, a budget which fails the government's own tests, Labor's tests and the community tests of equity and efficiency.

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