Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is an ugly fellowship—a not-so-secret society—that exists today. I call it the deficit or debt club. It remains unique. It knows no bounds or restraints. It is confined to no faction. It imposes no intellectual requirement and no geographic location. In the words of the mantra: union membership is required and blind adherence to collectivism is needed. No other circumstance or condition whatsoever, save the merit of lazy spending, shall entitle a Labor leader to membership of this fellowship as all post-war Labor leaders have received it. I rise today to make comment on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009, yet it is difficult to make comment on appropriation by a Labor government of some $3 billion without contextualising it with what the Labor government is doing with respect to its attempt to spend $42 billion—money it does not have.

If the Prime Minister simply put his hand in his pocket and threw in a dollar coin, at least it could be said that he had raised some of it. So today we draw a line in the sand, a line that divides the experienced, prudent economic management of the coalition with its track record from a panicked and deficit-ready government. We draw a line in the sand that divides the coalition, which paid off the last of Labor’s government debt of $96 billion, from this government—which this morning put forward a bill for an act of parliament of one page that seeks to increase the bond issuance and therefore takes the national debt to $200 billion. We draw a line in the sand that divides the coalition, as best able to manage money, from Labor in a long line of deficits from Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and now the Prime Minister.

Today the Prime Minister has demanded that the parliament approve his plans for $42 billion within 42 hours—a billion dollars an hour—and has refused to discuss let alone negotiate the package with the coalition, so today we draw a line in the sand. Almost all economists agree that the recession has a long way to go. It will not be a V recession. The Lord knows we hope it will not be an L recession. But it will be a U recession, and this Labor government is panicking. It has fired all its bullets at the first engagement. Rather than a few, well aimed shots and then working in concert with others around it, it has blattered off the full magazine.

Let us look at the history of Labor governments as we look at Appropriation Bill (No. 3) and Appropriation Bill (No. 4), because leopards do not change their spots. They apparently just hide behind economic conservatives. The Prime Minister before the election may well have stood with glass and the skyline of Brisbane at his back and said in his nonchalant way, ‘Some people have described me as an economic conservative.’ I spend time in my Gold Coast seat of Fadden and, when I go to Brisbane asking whether there is anyone out there who would describe this member of the deficit- and debt-laden fellowship as an economic conservative, you can hear the whisper of silence.

Mr Whitlam had a massive increase in spending and a massive increase in tax revenue to cover it and the Australian people, after being on a high through the ‘It’s Time’ campaign, threw him out on his ear where he belonged. The Hawke-Keating government came in ’83. In the first year of the Hawke government, debt increased by $7 billion up to $16 billion. By the time the nation threw out the subsequent Keating government, $96 billion in debt had been accumulated. Over $60 billion in public servant super liabilities had been left to go and grow. In 1996 there was $8 billion in interest payments per annum. By the time that debt was paid off and $60 billion was put away in the Future Fund, the combined amount of money that had to be raised to cover the debt and the future fund liabilities and to pay the interest was something like $200 billion—and it took the coalition 10 years to pay it off.

Now this Rudd Labor government is seeking to raise $200 billion of debt again, because that is what Labor governments do. That is what the fellowship of the deficit debt club does. You cannot enter the fellowship without thrusting the nation into debt, because that is all you know. This debt is not productive debt. It does not look for tax cuts or for R&D expenditure in cuts. It does not look for cuts in capital gains tax to get cash flow back into businesses. It does not look to cover superannuation liabilities to restore cash flow. This is as Obama-esque as it comes in funding all of Labor’s pet projects under the guise of the global financial crisis. Is it any wonder that not a single House Republican voted for Obama’s package? Not one did, because in Obama’s $800 million package they would be lucky to have $100 billion worth of actual productive expenditure. The rest of it is all typical left-wing pet projects.

Now Prime Minister Rudd joins the fellowship of the deficit and debt club. In 2008-09 he had a budget surplus of $22 billion—granted, a lot of that was from cheeky accounting tricks and other things put into it. It will now be a $22 billion deficit—a fairly impressive performance and turnaround for a first year in office. In his first year in office, how has he contributed to this great, unique fellowship of deficit and debt? A $44 billion turnaround in his budget position would have to be history-making. His $10.4 billion cash splash proved to be ineffective as an economic stimulus. That is not to say the people who received it did not appreciate it—I am sure they did. But looking at the spending increase in retail sales of a mere 3.7 per cent seasonally adjusted, with a maximum of a $500 million increase even though increases were building in November, let us say that the increase did not continue but stopped and that $500 million extra is due to the stimulus, which means only five per cent of the stimulus was spent. No wonder that has been no stimulus at all. That follows the US example where $125 billion was put into the economy and the figures showed a sharp increase in income but no reciprocal increase in expenditure.

Now we have $42 billion, all debt. Every single cent will be borrowed. We are expecting a budget where the forward estimates may well have debt going out to $115 billion. And we have that offensive one-page bill which seeks to raise $200 billion in debt to the issuance of government bonds. How any Labor parliamentarian can sleep at night is absolutely and utterly beyond me.

When questioned how the debt will be paid off, we had the Treasurer stand and say, ‘As soon as the economy starts to grow above the trend, we will start to pay the debt back.’ What does ‘grow above the trend’ possibly mean? He then wanted to say, ‘As soon as growth automatically kicks in, we’ll start to pay the debt back.’ Does he stand there, praying to the great financial gods and saying, ‘Please grow above the trend, please automatically kick back in.’ It is no plan to pay off one-fifth of a trillion dollars to say, ‘As soon as growth increases above the trend or growth increases automatically we will pay back the fifth of a trillion dollars we sunk this nation into.’ If you add in state Labor debt, which is approaching $100 billion, we now have a combined debt position put in by the Labor governments of this country approaching one-third of a trillion dollars. How in the name of all that is decent, how in the name of our children’s futures, is one-third of a trillion dollars going to be paid off?

I guess Labor do not care because after the failed Whitlam experience the coalition took care of it; after the appalling, abominable Keating years, the coalition took care of it. I guess in their haphazard thinking deep down, in places that they do not talk about at parties, after the failure of the Rudd government and the one-fifth of a trillion dollars largesse being left to the children, they are hoping and probably praying that the coalition will come in and pay it all back again.

The largesse does not stop here. There is a political strategy but clearly no economic one. The Prime Minister has declared 12 wars: wars on drugs, cancer, inflation, unemployment, global unemployment, whale hunting, Aboriginal disadvantage, downloads, pokies, alcopops, doping in sport and bankers’ salaries. Wars cost money. If you are going to declare war on a problem, I expect the community would expect to see solutions and solutions will cost money—$42 billion in debt being thrown away, on top of existing debt provisions, $200 billion more in total, and here we have 12 unfunded wars. We also have 160 unfunded reviews, summits, commissions, inquiries and conferences, all reporting back within the next 12 to 18 months, all with a range of recommendations which, I suggest, will cost money. Perhaps that is where some of the fifth of a trillion dollars is going.

Have you had a look through Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2008-2009? It may simply be a mere $3 billion, but it will be $3 billion borrowed from the future of our children. There is $13.95 million for climate change and the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I gather that is for advertising, to put some more scare campaigns out there about what is happening rather than speak scientifically and legitimately about the science—an appropriate response. There is $101 million extra for solar panel rebates, rebates the government said were not needed until the coalition pressure overturned them and Minister Garret saw sense. There is $10 million extra for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy to meet higher costs of the broadband project assessment process. This was the $4.7 billion broadband project, an election promise. Prime Minister Rudd said today that all promises will be met, but this promise was that within six months we would have the tender process well and truly finalised and ready to go. Here we are, 13 months later, and it is nowhere near finalised and we have an appropriation for $10 million more to meet the assessment process costs. We have a real increase for Defence of $278 billion due to ‘other expenditure reduced’—something like $580 million reduced.

Labor is selling the future of our children by loading them down with debt. Whilst these appropriation bills and some of their major areas are not contentious and will be passed by the coalition, there is no way known on this green earth that we will stand by on this $42 billion unproductive giveaway and allow its passage through the House or the Senate.

The ugly fellowship of the deficit debt club knows no bounds, it knows no restraints, and after question time today it knows no hide or cheek. It belongs to no faction, there is clearly no intellectual requirement and there is no geographical location. Union membership is binding. Adherence to collectivism is needed. No other circumstance or condition whatsoever, save the merit of lazy spending, entitles a Labor leader to membership of the fellowship. Prime Minister Rudd has now shown conclusively that he will join Whitlam, Hawke and Keating as members of the fellowship who have loaded the future children of this nation with unproductive debt.

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