Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Australian scientists have led the world. We announced an investment last night to increase health and medical research, which was $125 million per annum, to $700 million—a fivefold increase—for 65 new fellowships and $235 million for laboratories and facilities and investment programs. But did he say, for example, that we had given it to the wrong institutes or that it should not have been done or that it should have gone through the ARC rather than the NHMRC? This is what politics and political debate used to be before the roosters debased parliamentary debate in this place with the kind of snippety little speeches that they give where everything is wrong but a policy never appears. That is what political debate used to be in this chamber. I think one of the problems for the Labor backbench is that they have not seen anything different. You think this is normative; it is not. You did not used to be that bad as an opposition. This is what has been happening under the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition policy—debasement with the kinds of shenanigans that we have been seeing of recent times.

Let me come to foreign debt. I knew that we would have a little bit of foreign debt, because Michelle Grattan told us that the Labor strategy group had recently had a meeting in Sydney with PowerPoint slides. The first of their slides was headed ‘What is our purpose?’ That is a good question. I am not sure what the answer was. The leadership group was there. One of the things that they decided they had to do was identify a major national problem. This is what the research focus group had told them: you have to find a major national problem and give a whole-of-opposition political focus to it. Labor believed that they could find an issue in the foreign debt ‘crisis’. The article stated:

… Labor believes it can build its economic credentials by teasing out the problem foreign debt can cause …

Here it is; it came out of a focus group and a PowerPoint slide. It is faithfully brought in here by the rooster, as he does all the time and as he runs through here, as a consequence of the focus group. Wouldn’t you think, by the way, if he were really concerned about foreign debt that he would have announced the policy which would deal with it? But you did not hear a policy on this matter either, because the at all costs Labor strategy is to never give a policy. ‘Never let them know where you stand, never allow yourself to be pinned down and never get into a policy debate,’ is what they are told coming out of the focus groups, ‘otherwise you can’t keep up the criticism.’

Let me make a point about foreign debt. No foreign debt is owed by the Australian government because the Australian government owes no debt—no domestic debt and no foreign debt in net terms. Yes, it is true that Australian corporations borrow overseas, and principally they are the banks—Westpac, Com Bank, the National and the ANZ. The principal borrowers overseas in this country are those companies. Would we be concerned if we thought they could not service their debt? Yes, we would. That is why we do stress tests on them, that is why we have APRA go through them and that is why we have the Reserve Bank. Are we worried that they cannot meet their debts? No, we are not, because all of our stress tests and the IMF stress test show that these banks—and every Australian knows it—are enormously profitable and very well capitalised.

That is who owes foreign debt in this country. Would foreign debt affect Australia’s interest rates? It would if it led to a downgrading of our credit, which it did under the Labor Party when it was downgraded on two occasions. But since we were elected we have taken that credit rating back up to AAA. You cannot get a higher credit rating than the Australian government has for foreign currency bonds, and that becomes the benchmark for private bonds operating in the market. I think we can push that one to one side as well.

In relation to our tax changes, the complaint seemed to be—and this is what he said—‘Last year we voted against tax changes and all we got was ridicule.’ You deserved it. That is what you deserve for voting against the tax changes this year. Labor have been so burned by that experience that he says, ‘We’re going to vote for it this year.’ In fact, he even seemed to suggest it was all his idea anyway. But it could not have been his idea, because he never expresses a policy and he certainly did not express this one.

Mr Deputy Speaker, if you want any evidence as to how rooster logic works in politics, you found it at the last election when Labor decided they were going to take a $600 payment off people. What was the reason why people were not worse off when you took $600 away from them? Remember what the member for Lilley said: ‘It wasn’t real money.’ Isn’t that funny? It went into bank accounts, it was exchanged for goods and services, but it was not real money. As Mr Latham said in his book, the night before the policy release he asked the member for Lilley what he should say about the abolition of the $600 annual payment. He replied, ‘Just say that it’s not real money.’ In other words, deny reality, contradict the obvious, assert against what actually is and try to skate through. It will not work, it is not comprehensive, it is not at all persuasive and it is one of the reasons why this has been the weakest opposition response to a budget in the last 11 years.

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