Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to bring to a close the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills. This budget continues the government’s record of sound fiscal and economic management. Since the government came to office it has run nine budget surpluses, compared with the five budget deficits in the last five years of the previous government. Net government debt is now below zero—that is, we are in a positive net asset position. The unemployment rate is at a 32-year low and inflation and interest rates are at historically low levels.

Since inheriting a deficit of two per cent of GDP—around $20 billion in today’s terms—the government has turned the budgetary situation around, with this budget estimating a cash surplus in 2007-08 of $10.6 billion. The economy has prospered under the government’s stewardship. Over the past decade Australia’s GDP per person has grown faster than the OECD average. The OECD noted last year that living standards in Australia have steadily improved since the beginning of the 1990s and now surpass all G7 countries except the United States. This is in stark contrast to the four decades prior to the 1990s when growth in GDP per person was usually below the OECD average rate of growth. The Australian economy is set to continue its impressive performance. GDP grew by 3.8 per cent in real terms through the year to the March quarter 2007, while inflation has remained contained. The outlook is for solid economic growth, low unemployment and moderate inflation. The unemployment rate is expected to remain near its historic low.

This budget contains a program of investment in education, skills training and transport infrastructure; income tax relief for people on low to moderate incomes, for the fourth year in a row; a doubling of the superannuation co-contribution to help secure retirement incomes; new funding for enhanced housing and education opportunities for Indigenous Australians; a range of initiatives to meet the challenge of climate change; measures to secure and defend our country; and a package of reforms to improve quality and choice in aged care. There is a substantial breadth of initiatives in this budget which will help strengthen the Australian economy and community for the future.

In his contribution to the debate the honourable member for Melbourne moved an amendment to the second reading motion on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-08. My colleagues on this side of the chamber have responded comprehensively to the assertions in the amendment, so I will not respond in detail. The government obviously does not support the proposed amendment.

The effect of good economic management goes right through our economy. Certainly it has impacted very positively in my electorate of Eden-Monaro—and, in summing up these bills, I want to take part of the time I have to go through some of the very positive aspects that have happened in the electorate of Eden-Monaro.

We should remember that economic management is not just an end in itself but a means to an end and when you get rid of the interest payments on a $96 billion debt, which is what we inherited back in 1996, that money can be used to help Australian families. Certainly we have been able to help families in my electorate of Eden-Monaro in that period of time as we reduced the debt and got rid of that debt, therefore not having to fork out about $8 billion a year in interest payments. The flow-on to the economy and therefore employment has also been extremely positive in my electorate. As a number of people have said, there is no better social security than to have a job. In Eden-Monaro the unemployment rate is at 4.6 per cent. That is almost half what it was when I was elected in 1996.

In the largest city in my electorate, Queanbeyan, just across the border from Canberra, unemployment is now down to a tiny 2.4 per cent. The biggest complaint I get now around many parts of my electorate is that businesses are having difficulty finding people to fill jobs. It is a great problem to have, but that is the current problem for many businesses: they cannot find people to do the work that they have to do.

Many people talk about skills crises and, yes, there are skills shortages, absolutely. But as I point out to many people there was no skills shortage in the late eighties and early nineties. Nobody ever talked about skills shortages back then. Has this just happened? There were no skills shortages back then because there was 10 per cent unemployed. So if you have a high unemployment rate you will not have a skills shortage. When you reduce unemployment to the levels that we have now—4.2 per cent nationally, 4.6 in my electorate and 2.4 per cent in Queanbeyan—there will be shortages because people are looking for people to fill jobs. They have the jobs, but everybody is already in work so of course there is a shortage.

Education has benefited superbly across Eden-Monaro, and probably one the great programs that we introduced in the last couple of years was the Investing in Our Schools program. In fact, I was in Nimmitabel on Friday morning to open the Investing in Our Schools project at the Nimmitabel Public School. They have covered an outside area as part of their project plus they were able to buy additional computers and cover the entrance from the street into the school. Nimmitabel on the Monaro gets pretty cold during the winter, and one of the major problems was when you walked into the school you would get dew and ice in the morning forming, which was quite dangerous for the kids coming to school. So they have covered that area plus an outside area where they can still do things during wintertime and also be in the shade during hot summers. They are great projects for that particular school.

These are the sorts of things that you would think the state education system, which obviously has overall responsibility for funding public schools, would have done something about a log time ago. But no, they could never get it up the priority list for state schools. That is why the Investing in Our Schools program came to the fore. Many of us I am sure, like the member for Blair, would go around their schools and find all these little jobs that just never seemed to get done. State governments would never fund them. So when Brendan Nelson the then minister heard of many of these difficulties in many schools, this is where the Investing in Our Schools program came from. It is addressing those issues for each of the individual schools, not a program for all schools. It is not a one-size-fits-all; it is responding to individual school needs.

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