Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

There was a moment of hope in the speech of the Minister for Small Business; a moment of hope—

An opposition member: Yeah—when it finished!

No, earlier than that. Something I have been waiting for, for the nearly 40 months of what is now the Abbott-Turnbull-Joyce government, is: any sense of what this plan is. They keep talking about the plan, and I keep looking for it! And actually, I really genuinely am looking for it.

Over the first three years of this government, I would go out and talk to business, and what I heard back from them was this incredible disappointment that we had a government that, in a time of rapid change, when there was so much work for a government to do, really did nothing. It was as if they had pushed a pause button for three years.

I have to say: when Tony Abbott was finally rolled as Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull became the Prime Minister, the better angels in me said, 'No matter what this means for a future Labor government, even if this means that the Liberals will actually win again, we cannot continue with our finger on pause. We actually need a plan for this nation. Maybe now we can have one. And that is more important than which of us wins.' A plan was desperately needed because we had gone 2½ years without one. So I had been waiting for it.

This is what I heard from the Minister for Small Business: I heard him bag Labor for three minutes—that is the first thing in the 'plan'. He talked about 25 years of growth—which of course is not this government; it is many governments. He talked about the trade agreements—true: there are three trade agreements; there will be winners from those; there will also be losers, which are never mentioned. Then we heard about businesses using the internet—this from a government that scrapped any opportunity to build a decent fibre network in this country by their stuffing of the NBN! Then we heard of a great university student—although a 20 per cent cut to universities is still in their budget. Then we heard the words 'jobs and growth' again. And then, for the last four minutes of the speech, we heard about the tax cut which is now not going to pass the Senate anyway in its full measure.

So what did we hear from the person who said 'I'm now going to outline the plan. We have a plan. Here it is'? It was a rote plan on a piece of paper—and I thought: wow, I'm actually going to hear it! What did we hear? Nothing. NBN would be a plan. Funding universities would be a plan. That would matter—actually funding infrastructure. Rather than putting it in the budget and then removing it and then saying it is big again the next year and then removing it and then saying it is big again, an actual plan would help.

Even if they have a plan, you would think that when key moments take place in the financial year—such as the release at the end of September of the final budget figures from the preceding financial year—this government, which has been spruiking how they have been reducing deficit and how they have such a great plan, would actually talk about. Instead what happened was really quite interesting. In the last few hours of 30 September, which is the deadline—under cover of the football grand finals, a long weekend and the start of the school holidays—the government released the financial statements for the previous financial year without a press conference and without even a detailed media release. Extraordinary! In all my experience in government, I have never seen a government actually try and hide the outcome of its previous financial year in that way, particularly when it comes into the parliament every day and talks about how well it is doing in reducing 'Labor's' debt and deficit.

Let's look at the figures they tried so much to hide. The 2015-16 budget deficit was $39.6 billion, or 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product—up from $17.1 billion in the May 2014 budget, which was Hockey's budget. They tripled the deficit! And then, when the results come out, this government, which has claimed for the last three years to have had this plan, hides the results as much as it can. They are not out there spruiking their great achievement; they are doing everything they can to hide it. And it is not surprising.

So when we talk today about the collapse of the Turnbull government's economic plan, the real tragedy is that they never had one in the first place. And we desperately need one. Every single peak body or business that comes into my office talks about the changes in the way the world is operating and the desperate need for a policy response that will stimulate them and allow them to take up the opportunities that exist in the world. We desperately need a plan; we really do. And we do need one that includes something more than a tax cut that you cannot deliver anyway.

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