John Anderson (Gwydir, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I will try and respect the request to keep the length of our speeches to a minimum. I wanted to take the opportunity, in the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills, to comment on some aspects of the budget. As a general overview, I am delighted that the budget continues a pattern of very careful economic management. It is not easy—far more difficult than the punter would recognise—to put together a sound budget. I do not think anything prepared those of us who had not been involved in it before—which was really all of us with the exception of the Prime Minister—for the shock of just how much work was involved and how many difficult decisions had to be made in putting together a budget, as we were to discover in 1996.

I was one of the six people on the original ERC, from the perspective of the current coalition government. I can remember during those first four budgets the extraordinary time commitments and the astonishing difficulties which that led to in doing all of the other things that we are expected to do as members and ministers in this place and in our own electorates—as well as my responsibilities to rural and regional Australia in travelling in the bush to explain what I was up to. I think the first two budgets—remembering that the first was brought down in August 1996 and the second followed quite soon afterwards, when we restored the budget to the traditional May timeslot in 1997—saw us spending something like five of the first 14 months in government sitting on the Expenditure Review Committee.

One of the great difficulties we faced was that these days so much of a federal budget is driven by entitlement. There is very little room to move on discretionary expenditure. In fact, the discretionary areas tend to be areas like defence, infrastructure, roads and what have you, because most of people’s unemployment benefits, age pensions and these sorts of things are today entitlement driven. There is remarkably little room to move. So if you are seeking to turn a budgetary situation around, particularly when your country is still experiencing high levels of unemployment and relatively modest growth levels, surprisingly difficult decisions have to be made. I remember in two or three sessions debating—and this will seem unbelievable to those members present—whether or not we should continue a $90,000 rat-baiting program on Lord Howe Island. We eventually did. That was the sort of detail that we delved down into. It was just extraordinary stuff. It was very grinding work indeed.

I remember—as I am sure a former minister in attendance here, the member for Cook, will recall—the experience of returning to the office after one of these gruelling days. We had been in there since 9.30 in the morning, we had had lunch in the cabinet room, we had had dinner in the cabinet room, and I had got out at about half past 10 and looked at the files and thought, ‘They’re just getting on top of me yet again.’ I took them all back to the motel room and finished them at four o’clock in the morning. I had two or three hours sleep and then went back to the cabinet room. They are gruelling days indeed.

I say that because I think those who are responsible for putting together budgets do us all a mighty service—perhaps an unrecognised and unsung one. I compliment the Treasurer in particular, on this his 11th budget, for continuing that reign of economic responsibility; for the resultant relief on interest rate pressures, because the government is not in the borrowing pockets competing with the private sector for scarce resources to borrow; for keeping the nation in surplus; and for the careful attention to fairness and justice that I really do think he has reflected. As evidence of that, I think of the increased attention to the plight of carers across our nation—just one of myriad examples—at the same time as we have sought to recognise the need for upgrading infrastructure and so forth. It reflects very well upon the Treasurer and upon the government. I feel I can say that now that I am a mere backbencher associate of the government.

Let me come to three areas that I would like to touch on in the time available to me. But I should ask the incoming deputy speaker how he prefers to be addressed. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker?

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