Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

I strongly support this matter of public importance today. This is all about the lack of leadership that Australia has. We have just heard this diatribe from the Assistant Treasurer. I was just mentioning to the member for Reid that he really should spend some time coaching the Assistant Treasurer, because, as we know, the Assistant Treasurer is the great branch stacker from the western suburbs of Sydney and obviously he has been spending even more time stacking his branches in recent times. He needs to go back and actually have a look at what the Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, Senator Sherry, actually said about short selling. He did not say that he would not introduce legislation. What he said was that the government would not ban short selling.

The fact of the matter is that this country is experiencing a crisis of confidence and is without economic and financial leadership. When we talk about leadership, I think it is always instructive to look back at what Labor left the Australian people when the coalition came to office in 1996. We inherited the results of Labor’s leadership at the time. That leadership left us with a $10 billion budget deficit. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, net government debt was $96 billion and the Australian people were suffering under crippling unemployment, rocketing interest rates and high inflation. Now the Assistant Treasurer is walking out of the House. He does not want to hear the truth. He is not prepared to listen to the truth of the matter. He is off to stack some more branches in his electorate.

When we came to office, having been elected in 1996, rather than set up a committee, we showed true leadership. We repaid Labor’s $96 billion in debt, we returned budget after budget to surplus and of course we left a record of low unemployment rates that had not been seen in a generation. The fact is this Prime Minister has inherited economic surpluses of $110 billion over five years. Labor’s so-called leadership—and I do use the term very loosely—have inherited net assets of $45 billion—all as a result of the coalition’s economic leadership and reflecting the fact that more Australians are now employed than at any other time in our history. It is important to put this into context. When the coalition was in government, we did all of that despite the financial meltdowns and crises that gripped the world throughout our time in office and despite the regional environmental disasters that impacted on our friends to the north. The fact is our financial position in Australia is strong and robust, and we are the envy of the region and, in fact, the world.

Going to this matter of public importance, you have to ask yourself these questions. What has the Rudd government achieved in almost 12 months of office? What effective action has the Prime Minister taken to consolidate that strong economy, that robust economy, that we left him? Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have to tell you: not much. But I can tell you what the Prime Minister has done. He has watched, he has watched, he has watched and he has travelled. This Prime Minister is not a Prime Minister of Australia; he is now Australia’s prime tourist. In fact, he has now become Kevin 747. He watches from his first-class plane seat or from his limousine and he ponders, he considers and he muses. He watches petrol prices, he watches grocery prices, he watches interest rates, he watches the cost of living, he watches inflation, he watches whales and, as we have heard today, he is watching the pension. He watches child care, he watches water, he watches state debt, he watches Asia, he is watching hospitals, he is watching teenagers’ teeth and health, he is watching schoolteachers, he has been watching Belinda Neal, he has been watching the republic and he has even been watching his weight lately. As a matter of fact, he has watched the lot of them. All he does is watch. But then he does have a lot to muse about as he is travelling overseas.

Since the Prime Minister has come to office he has announced 83 reviews; 17 committees, commissions or boards; 12 inquiries; 11 working groups; seven summits and 11 discussion papers. This Prime Minister does enjoy talking and we do know that he does like to ask himself questions and provide the answers. But he has also undertaken seven consultations and five audits—and that was only up until recently and in the last couple of weeks more have been added. So what does all of this achieve? Are we paying less for groceries? Are we paying less for fuel? What has been achieved as an outcome of the millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money that this Prime Minister has spent on these limitless inquiries and commissions?

I have to say that I wish that all of this activity had achieved something and I really wish that there had been effective action by this government. But the sad reality is that this Prime Minister constantly gets confused. He gets confused between shuffling papers from one side of the table to the other, in question time, and doing something that is appropriate and actually undertaking action. But then I suppose we have to expect that from a Labor Party hack that has been working in Labor state governments for many years and has had to explain the appalling performance of Labor state governments for many years.

I remember when the Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition he once asked the question, ‘Where will the buck stop?’ He said that the buck was going to stop with him. I thought to myself at the time, ‘That’s good, that’s a Leader of the Opposition that wants to take responsibility, that’s a Leader of the Opposition  that’s taking a mature approach.’ He said he wanted to see an end to the blame game, but what I find very interesting is that, whenever anything goes wrong, it does not matter what it is, it is generally the coalition’s fault or it could be the fault of global forces, the international credit crunch, OPEC, the Iraq war, even his own staff, the mining boom, alcohol companies, quite often oil companies, the solar panel industry, his own department, the Public Service, the drought, global warming, luxury car companies—the list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the buck never seems to stop with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He cannot get within cooee of the buck, because it is always someone else’s fault or somebody else’s doing.

Australia is without leadership at a very uncertain time in our history. We are told by leading economists throughout Australia that the risk of Australia actually going into a recession is very high. There are economists saying that we have a prospect of going into a recession. Look at what is happening: household wealth has fallen, real wages have stagnated, prospects for employment do not look good. This government has projected in its budget that Australian working men and women will lose their jobs over the next 12 months. This government plans in its budget for Australian workers to be sacked. There are signs that the pace of domestic demand is slowing, and consumer and business confidence is at an all-time low.

When we talk about leadership, normally you expect leadership from a Prime Minister, you expect leadership from a Treasurer and you expect it from the whole government. But this is the Treasurer who said the day before the Reserve Bank of Australia was to meet to make a decision about interest rates that the genie was out of the bottle. What sort of economic leader would say the day before the Reserve Bank was going to meet that the inflation genie was out of the bottle? Leadership is about leading. It is all about doing what is right for Australians. It is about building confidence. It is about ensuring that Australians working out there today, tomorrow and tonight—those people on shiftwork tonight—have confidence. It is about giving them confidence in their future and their destiny. How on earth does Kevin Rudd expect Australians to go about their daily work when they do not have confidence in their government?

Australians themselves are making the necessary changes. They are making those changes because they know the government is not making the changes. The government is not showing the leadership that is needed. We are in a state of financial turmoil, and the best that the Australian Prime Minister can do is get on an aeroplane, go over to New York and go to yet another talkfest. There have been no outcomes from any trip he has done since he became Prime Minister of this country. (Time expired)

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