Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Fact No. 4: since 2004-05 Commonwealth spending has grown at an average of around four per cent real per year, which is more rapid growth than in any other four-year period in the last decade and a half. If I recall the presentation in parliament the other day by the Minister for Finance, in the last financial year it was running at 4½ per cent real. That is simply unsustainable. That is fact No. 4. Fact No. 5: at the time of the election, despite the best terms of trade in 50 years, we had generated 5½ years of monthly trade deficits, the longest sequence in Australia’s economic history, contributing to Australia’s record foreign debt, which has tripled to a record at $570 billion. That is fact No. 5.

If you put all these things together, what you have is a clear-cut summary of the dimensions of the economic challenge that we on this side of the House, the government of the day, have been presented with in terms of the economic performance of those who preceded us. It is a very uncomfortable and confronting set of facts for those opposite as they realise that they actually left Australia with a series of far-reaching economic problems on the inflation front, on the interest rates front, on the productivity front and with government spending out of control. All these are problems which now confront us and actually require a course of action to deal with them rather than our pushing them all to one side. So framing a budget under these circumstances is difficult when combined with and compounded by the fact that the state of the global economy means that we have revised downwards growth projections for the United States economy, revised downwards growth projections for Europe and revised downwards, somewhat, projections for Japan. Therefore we have a difficult set of global economic circumstances and we have an economic legacy from those opposite, uncomfortable and disquieting as they may find it, which, frankly, registers as a fail mark against each of the five or six measures that I just ran through.

So when it comes to priorities our challenge is this: how do we manage to maintain responsible economic management, draw government expenditure back under control and eliminate unnecessary spending programs while at the same time making sure that we are extending the hand of support to those in the community who need it? Front and centre among those in the community who need support are carers and pensioners. They are among the most vulnerable. It has been interesting in this debate today to listen to the faux expressions of compassion by those opposite—a political party and a previous government which for 12 years did not lift a finger to address the five or six key economic facts and challenges that I ran through before and instead squandered their inheritance. On the compassion register, look at Work Choices, look at the impact on working families and look at the impact on those who are struggling to make the family budget balance at the end of each week. Instead, we had minister after minister standing at this dispatch box in the time of the previous government saying: ‘Not our problem. We’re not faintly concerned about the interests of working families.’ Beyond working families and beyond those who need a decent and fair industrial relations system, we go back to the core needs of those who are the most vulnerable in our community: carers and pensioners. I cannot think of a more clear-cut commitment than what we have given in terms of carers and pensioners for the future. We have a commitment that goes to them not being any worse off on the question of the bonus payments to carers and pensioners and we have that commitment when it comes to utilities, a commitment in both cases which precedes the budget by two months, transcending anything which was ever provided by those opposite in previous budgets.

I would suggest that those opposite take a long, cold, hard look at themselves against the record that they have left the government on the economy, given the documents I have referred to, specifically about the handling of this bonus matter in the time during which they occupied the treasury bench. What I fear is happening is this: our government is applying to us on this side of the House a standard which those opposite never applied to themselves when they were the government of this nation and in office for 12 years. The government rejects this censure motion. The core reason for doing so is that it is absolutely predicated on a false argument that pensioners and carers would be worse off as a consequence of this upcoming budget on the question of the bonus payments.

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