Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Far be it from me to rain on the parade of ashen-faced, first-time Labor MPs desperate to reconnect with their voter base while looking at Newspoll results. But let us be honest about this motion on superannuation and say that the measure of this government is not the fancy projections that its economists can generate for next 10 years. The measure of this administration is what it does this year for those working class families that it so often alludes to. The government has provided those families with a massive budget deficit—enormous government debt—that is getting worse, not better, and it will continue to do so next year and the year after.

It is okay to prepare a budget that refers to 2014 but, honestly, what we are looking at is what is happening in this year. What we are looking at this year, of course, is uncontrolled spending. The best way a government can demonstrate its commitment to working Australians and their superannuation is to run a budget surplus. When a government runs a budget surplus it is empowered to offer greater superannuation contributions. The Rudd government is asking small business to pay the higher amounts while, at the same time, offering them miniscule tax cuts in 2013. I am definitely of the view that this administration will not be around to fill that promise.

What happened to the days when governments talked about tax cuts sequentially, starting with the current year? If this administration has any form at all, it is for announcing changes for the years ahead but doing nothing in the current year. It is all well and good for the government to apologise to Indigenous Australians, but its fear of apologising for its own actions right now shows its true measure. What we have had from this government is rhetoric about national savings but conduct that has been the complete opposite to that. This government talks about national savings immediately before an election, but it has already engaged in the disproven exercise of writing $900 cheques to people in the hope of securing their support. The money is long gone that could have funded this superannuation increase, and now we are watching a government in demise and decline. It reminds me of those fabulous words, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, that I know you love just as much as I do: ‘Did they make you exchange your heroes for ghosts, your hot ashes for trees? Did they get you to exchange this hot air for a cool breeze?’

What we have seen in 2010 is a desperate pre-election struggle to reignite the class warfare for which that side of parliament is famous. It is picking on our own mining sector. It is using everyone’s taxes to fund its battle against its own mining sector. It is a completely preformed and fabricated pre-election battle to feed into its own beliefs that anyone who has a little bit more in resources should be handing it over now to pay for its pre-election promises.

I do not mind a government that looks five or 10 years ahead but the Rudd administration is simply unaccountable for what it does right now. That was no better exemplified than by the bizarre double twist with pike on election advertising. Mr Deputy Speaker, don’t you remember that waxy, polished, almost seductive face of the opposition leader in 2007 as he said: ‘You are all brothers. You are bearing witness to my words that there will be no pre-election advertising in the three months before an election.’ What do we do now in the final pre-rigor mortis struggle of that Prime Minister who will promise 10 years in advance anything on superannuation in a desperate move to retain his job?

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