Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, he is a miracle worker. It takes a true messiah to turn a $20 billion surplus into a $30 billion deficit. Only Saint Kevin of Canberra is capable of this extraordinary miracle of the loaves and fishes in reverse. That is what he has done.

I accept that, thus far at least, Australia has avoided a recession. As I said, I am grateful for that, as are all members on this side of the House. But it is not the government’s stimulus that has saved us. If stimulus spending saved economies from recession why is the United Kingdom, which also had a large stimulus, in serious and prolonged recession? And why is the United States, which had an even bigger stimulus on a proportionate basis, in deep recession and why is their unemployment over 10 per cent?

Australia’s economic strength, which I am grateful for, owes far more to the reforms of the former government than it does to the spending of the current one. It owes far more to Peter Costello and John Howard than it does to Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. It also owes, quite honestly, far more to Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, who were tough prime ministers and who were prepared to make hard decisions in a good cause. It owes far more to their work than it does to the work of current frontbenchers.

If the stimulus was designed, as the Prime Minister tells us today, entirely to keep Australia out of recession, why is it continuing now that a recession has plainly been avoided? The crisis is over but the spending is continuing. He just cannot stop. The Prime Minister said today that half of the $42 billion has been injected. In other words, half of it is yet to be spent. That is $20-odd billion that is yet to be spent even though the crisis has passed and the recession has never happened. We know it has never happened because he is congratulating himself for avoiding it and yet he is still spending the money. He is congratulating himself for avoiding something which he is still spending money to avoid. Something weird is happening inside his head.

He boasts that 75 per cent of the houses under the social housing package will be completed by the end of 2010. It is nice that he can actually complete some houses, because the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is incapable of completing houses in the Northern Territory. But these houses will be finished by the end of 2010 to save us from a crisis at the end of 2008. This logic just does not work.

He boasted today that 14 major road projects will be completed by the end of June 2014. Hang on a minute. This is a crisis at the end of 2008 and he is saving us from the crisis at the end of 2008 by finishing roads in 2014. Go figure. This is someone who plainly does not understand economics. He has embarked on the greatest spending spree in Australia’s history and he has dressed it up as a recession-buster. What he has really done in embarking on this spending spree is reveal the real nature of contemporary Labor: they are addicted to spending and they are addicted taxes.

Having spent the surplus that John Howard and Peter Costello so painstakingly accumulated, he now needs a new pot of gold from which to spend on further handouts. That is why he needs his emissions trading scheme. He needs it to raise $120 billion in 10 years. He needs this pot of gold, this cash cow, so he can then engage in politically motivated handouts to the groups he wants to reward and win re-election.

Just for the benefit of the Prime Minister and those who might have been taken in by his statement today, only two per cent of projects under the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program are completed. Only one per cent of projects under the Science and Language Centres for 21st Century Secondary Schools program are completed. Only two per cent of new social housing is currently completed. None of the national road projects are finished and none of the infrastructure program strategic projects are completed.

All of these things that have not been done are supposed to have saved us from a recession. Who does the Prime Minister think he is fooling? Certainly, he has not fooled some—indeed, most—of the economic commentators whose business it is to inquire into these things. Scott Haslem from UBS said late last year:

By the government’s own account, growth—

in 2011—

would be at 4.5 per cent, so why are we still stimulating the economy?

Professor Sinclair Davidson of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology said in evidence to the Senate in September last year:

…if people want to argue that the Australian stimulus package has prevented the Australian economy from going into recession, they would also need to explain why those other economies with similar sized … packages to ours have … gone into recession.

This is the problem that he faces. If the stimulus package is what saved Australia, why has the same package not saved other countries? It was not the stimulus package or the spending that saved Australia; it was the reforms that saved Australia—reforms that this government cannot contemplate and in fact are winding back.

I could go through specific elements of this package and talk about how money has been wasted, how money could have been better spent and the inevitable problems in trying to spend in an enormous hurry—money which should have been spent in a much more considered way. I do not have time to do that, but I will go to one point from the Prime Minister’s speech. The Prime Minister, I presume, is trying to put the best possible gloss on his economic record. He told us in his speech that his $42 billion spending package had saved 112,000 jobs. I understand every job is precious. I care about jobs. I was part of a government which created more than two million jobs. I know what it is like to create jobs. Doing the arithmetic on the Prime Minister’s statement, each one of those 112,000 jobs cost about $400,000 to create. I am all in favour of creating, preserving and protecting jobs, but each job should not cost $400,000 to create. A government which can only save jobs at a cost of $400,000 a pop is a government that does not know how to govern. It is a government that cannot manage an economy.

The Prime Minister tried to tell us today that he is Australia’s saviour, in a way that certainly no-one from the opposition could possibly be. He tried to tell us what an effective Prime Minister he has been. The only thing that this Prime Minister has been effective at is spending money and running down the surplus. Creating $200 billion and more in net debt is precisely this Prime Minister’s monument thus far. Two years in government and this is really the only substantial achievement, if that is the word, that he can point to. A Prime Minister who has proven to be much better at spending money than at raising it and much better at running down the economy than at reforming it is not a Prime Minister who has a long-term future at the helm of this country.

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