Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak about the way in which the last budget, and indeed the new Rudd Labor government’s agenda, has been one significant fraud on the Australian people. In particular I would like to note that in the lead-up to the 24 November election a couple of statements of fact were made that are worth repeating. The first is that, in many respects, the Australian economy was regarded as the ‘wonder down under’, to use the jargon that many economists around the world were using. Australia had the strongest possible economy following 15 or 16 years of continuous economic growth. Under the coalition, we saw Australia transformed as a country. When we were first elected in 1996, following an awful 13 years of Labor administration, we had a nation that was suffering under the weight of $96 billion of debt. We had an unemployment rate that was over eight per cent. We had a budget deficit that was in excess of $10 billion. That was the legacy that was left to the previous coalition government.

During 11 years of sound, responsible economic management, we were able to turn that situation around and halve the unemployment rate from eight per cent to four per cent. We paid off in full the $96 billion of Labor Party debt so that, in essence, the Rudd Labor government inherited a net asset position of $60 billion, versus the $96 billion debt that the coalition government inherited when we took over after Labor. In addition to that, we turned around the Australian budgetary position so that it was no longer shackled with a $10 billion budget deficit but, rather, was enjoying budget surpluses of around 1½ per cent of GDP, approximately $12 billion to $15 billion. That was the track record in broad terms of the previous coalition government.

I and all coalition members know that in the lead-up to the last federal election the Australian people had very significant concerns that they wanted addressed. These concerns were preyed upon by a populist then opposition leader, in the form of Kevin Rudd, our new Prime Minister. He marched around Australia and said that, under the Labor Party, he would make sure that two significant concerns were addressed immediately. The first promise was that a Rudd Labor government would bring down petrol prices. Day after day, the coalition was faced with questions from the Rudd Labor opposition about why it was not doing more on petrol prices. Indeed, state Labor members and Labor candidates would say to people in my electorate, ‘You know, petrol prices are very high. If the coalition really cared it would do more. Under a Rudd Labor government we will bring down petrol prices because we’ve got a bold new plan.’ That is what the Labor Party said.

In addition to that, I had Labor candidates running around my electorate making claims that, under a Rudd Labor government, they would bring down grocery prices, because, according to the Australian Labor Party, we had apparently taken our eye off the ball. Labor candidates said that if they were elected they had a bold new plan to change grocery pricing so that it would be lower under the Labor Party. They were the two major promises that the Rudd Labor government took to the last election—coupled, of course, with reforms to Work Choices. I will touch on all three in more detail.

At the outset, it is important to understand where Australia was when the Howard government was elected in 1996 and where Australia was left when the Howard government lost office in 2007, and to contrast that with the performance of the Rudd Labor government in the last six months. Given the government said it was very important that the budget, which was handed down recently, be a budget that would lower inflation pressure, it is interesting to have a look at what actually was achieved in the last Rudd budget.

The Rudd Labor government have made a point of going about the place saying that they have inherited the highest inflation rate for 16 years. All members of the coalition concede that point. It is a matter of statistical fact. It is the highest level for 16 years—incidentally, the highest level since Labor were last in power. Inflation did get high from time to time under the coalition, but the key difference is that, each time inflation would start to creep up, the coalition was able to address it and bring it back down. That stands in stark contrast to the situation now that the Labor Party are back in power, when we see inflation sitting up higher than is comfortable for the Reserve Bank of Australia. Rather than doing as the previous coalition government did, making correct policy settings to ensure that they brought the inflation level down, the Rudd Labor government, and particularly the reckless Treasurer, Wayne Swan, have raced about Australia saying that the sky is caving in, that inflation is a crisis and that the budget needed to have some savage cuts. We heard for months that the Labor Party were going to ensure that this budget would contain significant cuts to put downward pressure on prices. We heard they wanted downward pressure on petrol prices and downward pressure on grocery prices and that they would put downward pressure on inflation as a result of this budget.

But what did we actually achieve in the last budget? What was it that the Australian people saw from this new Rudd Labor government? Much to their surprise, what they saw, rather than a budget that would put downward pressure on inflation, was a budget that would put upward pressure on inflation. Rather than being a budget that would put downward pressure on petrol prices, it was a budget that would put upward pressure on petrol prices. Rather than being a budget that will, as was promised by the Labor Party, put downward pressure on grocery prices, it is a budget that does absolutely nothing to make an impact on petrol prices except to increase transport costs so that, if anything, grocery prices are likely to go up under the Rudd Labor government. So much for all the promises of 24 November! So much for the new Labor government’s record and their promises of putting downward pressure on inflation and of lower petrol and grocery prices! The exact opposite has come to pass in a relatively short period of six months under this Labor government.

It brings me no joy to inform the people in my electorate of Moncrieff and the people of the Gold Coast more broadly about what this new Labor government is doing for the people of the Gold Coast, because it is almost worse than doing nothing. I would actually prefer that the Labor government did nothing for the people of the Gold Coast over what the Labor government is doing, which is taking them backwards. In particular, I would like to address one of the key concerns for all Gold Coast residents: health.

The Gold Coast has been Australia’s fastest-growing city for the last 25 years and it is anticipated to be the fastest-growing city for the next 30 years. We have significant strain on our public health system. I would not have minded if the Rudd Labor government had stood by their promise that their policy solution was the rollout of GP superclinics. The coalition previously adopted the stance that one way we could help to ease the burden on the public hospital system would be to ensure that we provided additional funding for after-hours medical care, because we knew that people did not get sick only between nine and five. We rolled out a whole spate of programs to ensure that medical clinics across the Gold Coast were able to offer care outside of regular business hours, including on the weekend.

I understand policy debate. The Rudd Labor government said, ‘That will not be our focus; our focus will be to deliver better health services through GP superclinics.’ So I looked forward eagerly and with some anticipation when recently the Rudd Labor government announced that there would be 31 GP superclinics. Unfortunately, not one of them is on the Gold Coast. A city of 600,000 people has been completely ignored by the Labor Party, who have failed to put a single GP superclinic on the coast. To make matters worse, they have cut funding for the GP after-hours clinics. In fact, the Labor Party have rubbed salt in the wounds of all those people on the Gold Coast, because they do not get a GP superclinic and, thanks to the insight of this Labor government, they have had after-hours medical care cut. It is a city of 600,000 people that now, thanks to this new Labor government, does not have access to after-hours medical care and does not have a GP superclinic. That is the record of the Labor Party, and it is important that all Gold Coasters know where they stand.

But the triple whammy has been the decision of the Labor Party to raise the Medicare surcharge. The impact of this we already know. According to the budget papers, approximately 498,000 taxpayers will shift from being privately insured to the public system. When you multiply that across families, not just taxpayers, we know that close to one million Australians will shift from being privately insured and go to the public system. That means, in a city of 600,000 people, thousands of Gold Coasters who previously were enjoying the benefits of private medical insurance will now be lining up in the emergency ward of the public hospital, waiting for six or eight hours, as they do right now, and that problem will only get worse. And it is also going to get worse because people can no longer go after hours to a GP clinic as that funding has been cut. They cannot go to a much-vaunted GP superclinic, because we do not have one. So, thanks to the Australian Labor Party, the Gold Coast now has no superclinic and no after-hours care and thousands of people have been shoved from the private system to the public system. That is the legacy of the Labor Party when it comes to health. That is the bold new reform and the bold new plan from the Rudd Labor government. I say to the people of the Gold Coast that they should look in a very disparaging way at any Labor politician who dares to set foot on the Gold Coast and they should ask them why they are not doing something on health, because Labor’s track record is abysmal. But I am afraid that it just follows on from the record of incompetence that we see from the state Labor government when it comes to Queensland Health.

Some months ago, the state health minister said that the Gold Coast would be receiving a new hospital, and I thought, ‘Great, an investment of several hundred million dollars in a new facility.’ I was pleased when they erected the sign on the block of land that said: ‘This is the site of the new Gold Coast hospital; construction will commence March 2007’. I was very excited as finally we were getting some recognition from the state Labor government. I was there in March 2007 and there was the sign and there were the trees. I went again in April 2007 and there was the sign and there were the trees. I went in May 2007; the sign was still there and the trees were still there, and I thought: ‘Construction must be going to start soon.’ I raised the point in the media, and I said, ‘Well, there’s the sign and there’s the block of land. Why haven’t they started building the new hospital?’ And I am pleased to report that the sign was taken down.

The state Labor government are now engaged in further deliberation and further consultation about where in fact they will put the hospital, but there is no solution whatsoever to the very legitimate health needs of a city of 600,000 people. The Labor Party in Queensland have a big problem, the same problem that exists across virtually every state Labor government in this country: the debt monkey is on their back—$85 billion of state debt. I say to the people of my electorate of Moncrieff and of the Gold Coast more broadly: this Labor Party at a federal level will do what the Keating and the Hawke Labor governments did; it will do what the Labor Party have done in every single state with their $85 billion of debt. It will take a very strong healthy Australian economy and it will destroy it. That will be the legacy of this new Rudd Labor government. I am happy to put my prediction on the table now. We saw from the Rudd Labor budget that, despite all the promises of this budget being one that would put downward pressure on inflation, it was in fact an inflationary budget, because it was a typical old-style Labor budget—big spending and big tax increases. That is what the Labor Party brought about in the most recent budget.

But, importantly, they also, unfortunately, cut spending in a whole host of areas. I have a large number of schools in my electorate which benefited from a coalition initiative called Investing in Our Schools. It was a billion-dollar program that saw all sorts of investments go into a whole range of classrooms. It was a program that I supported when the coalition was in government, because the state Labor government then was dragging its feet on critical infrastructure for schools. So the federal coalition government stepped up to the plate, and we said, ‘We’ll provide funding out of our budget surplus to help school P&Cs,’ because, frankly, if we had waited for the state Labor governments to do it we would still be waiting.

I have a vast array of schools in my electorate and to cite just some: Nerang State High School received $129,000 to refurbish its hall; Nerang state primary school received $125,000 for a shade structure court, a grounds upgrade and oval irrigation; William Duncan State School, $70,000 for a shade structure; Bellevue Park State School, new ICT and computer equipment to the tune of about $20,000; Benowa State High School, $100,000 for reverse cycle air-conditioning; Keebra Park State High School, $109,000 for a sports field and a further $40,000 for air-conditioning; and we saw at Miami State High School $100,000 for a canteen. In each of these areas—and these are just some examples—we were able to see direct investment by the coalition to improve the school facilities for young Gold Coast kids, because we believe in them.

But unfortunately that program has now been axed. It has been axed for the so-called education revolution that we have been hearing so much about from the Labor Party. You do not want to ask too many questions about what the education revolution is, because so far the grand total of it seems to be computers in boxes. The Labor Party like to say ‘computers in classrooms’, but it is very clear that it actually only extends as far as computers in boxes. The boxes with computers in them turn up at schools, with no extra funding to make sure they can be plugged in, no extra funding for security, no extra funding for workstations, no extra funding to make sure that there are power points to plug the computers into. This is the extent of the Labor Party’s forward thinking when it comes to their so-called education revolution.

There are a range of areas where Gold Coast families and older Gold Coasters have also missed out. The coalition was very focused on and paid strong attention to these two constituencies because they are people who make such a difference to the Australian community. These are the men and women and the older Australians who are the backbone of our communities. I was always very proud to be a strong advocate for them in the coalition’s party room when we were in government. It is very clear that the Rudd Labor government has completely ignored them. It is very clear that, despite a record amount of funding in the budget surplus, the Rudd Labor government simply does not have the wherewithal or desire to service the needs of families and older Australians on the Gold Coast. An example of this is its decision to change the eligibility rules for the Commonwealth healthcare card. Previously, thousands of Gold Coasters would have been eligible for the Commonwealth health card. That is no longer the case. Thanks to changes that were announced in this most recent budget, we now see older Gold Coasters no longer eligible, despite the fact that there was no consultation, despite the fact that their very legitimate requirements were completely ignored.

The other key program that had a funding cut in the budget was Regional Partnerships. This was a particularly important program for regional centres like the Gold Coast. The coalition were attempting to address key infrastructure requirements of cities like the Gold Coast, and Regional Partnerships was a crucial way of doing that. Unfortunately, the Labor Party tended to focus on Regional Partnerships and claimed that in some way it was a rort or a pork-barrelling exercise. How ironic that, despite all these unfounded attacks on the Regional Partnerships program, the Labor Party was still happy to accept several hundred thousand dollars for the ‘stump of knowledge’—or, I should say, the Tree of Knowledge—in Barcaldine. In addition to that, we have witnessed today that in government the Labor Party and in particular the member for Grayndler have altered the rules of the Noise Abatement Program so that he can provide $14 million to his local school for abatement of aircraft noise. How extraordinary that the $14 million that has been pork-barrelled into that school has been estimated, according to newspaper reports, as being twice the cost of building a new school. It is quite extraordinary that the Labor Party has the hide to be critical of an important program like Regional Partnerships when it engages in pork-barrelling to the tune of $14 million in its first six months for a school which just happens to be in the electorate of the member for Grayndler.

A very proud moment for me and the member for McPherson was the launch of the Australian Technical College on the Gold Coast. This was one of a series of ATC rollouts across Australia, and it provides very real opportunities for industry to work more closely with local schools to provide the best possible training opportunities for young Gold Coast kids. We heard that, as part of the education revolution, the Rudd Labor government intends to roll out a metal arts shop, a woodwork shop or something like them in each of the high schools. So, despite the fact that we have a purpose-built specialist ATC that is providing for hundreds of Gold Coast kids a first-class education in the vocational arts, specifically tailored to meet the needs of our local community, the Labor Party is going to walk away from that ATC, not fund it in the future and instead engage in some relatively pointless exercise of duplicating all that infrastructure—allegedly—across Gold Coast schools. I say ‘allegedly’ because I will believe it when I see it. I suspect it will be a long time before Gold Coast schools have the infrastructure that has been promised to them by the Rudd Labor government.

In summary, the first six months of the Rudd Labor government has been a very average six months. Despite the rhetoric that they would bring down petrol prices, it is clear that their only plan is to watch petrol prices and put no downward pressure on at all. Despite their promise to decrease grocery prices, grocery prices continue to skyrocket, with no plan at all. And, despite their promises to put downward pressure on inflation through the budget, it is clear that it is an old-time Labor big-spending, big-taxing budget.

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