Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What was so insensitive about all of that was that, when the Leader of Opposition had arrived, the Brisbane River had not yet peaked before he was playing grubby politics on the spot. He stands condemned for his behaviour. The opposition have not treated this with the seriousness that all of those people who have been affected really deserve. What we have had is a lack of appreciation, socially, of what has occurred dramatically in communities, a lack of appreciation of the size of the economic challenge it presents us with, and not the faintest idea about how you put a budget together and how you deal with these challenges.

Of course, this is not new. The opposition get all of the big economic calls wrong. They opposed in this House tooth and nail our fiscal stimulus, which saved this country and put it in the strong position that it is in now to deal with these natural disasters. We have had strong job creation: over 700,000 jobs created in this country. Compare that to what has gone on in the United States. Compare that to what has gone on in Europe. We have a strong economy because this government had the guts and the courage to put in place a stimulus, to make it work, to keep the doors of small business open and to support households in their time of need. And guess what? We are doing it again in an economically responsible way. We are doing it in the way that the Australian people deserve. We are doing it in the spirit that we have seen in our community over the past four of five weeks, the likes of which I have never experienced.

It has made me proud to be an Australian. Australians out there do not mind paying a modest levy because, unlike the opposition, they understand that this has to be paid for. They know that there is not some magic pudding that those opposite keep recycling so they can pretend there is some way of funding this without a levy. There is no way of funding it without a levy and prudent preparation of budgets. For the reasons which have now been demonstrated by subsequent events in terms of Cyclone Yasi, we have demonstrated our capacity and our knowledge of the economic situation to put in place a responsible approach which will see communities rebuilt and which does the decent thing by those who are affected.

As to the sort of tacky question we had today from the member for Dawson, I could not believe that it came from a Queenslander, in the circumstances that we are in. I simply could not believe it. It was rank, and he will pay an electoral price for that sort of behaviour, given the damage that has occurred in North Queensland and Far North Queensland. This is a modest levy that Australians are willing to pay because they are coming together to help each other. They understand that there is not a magic pudding and that we have to do this responsibility. They understand we have a strong economy. It is going to continue to be strong. We have a problem in the short term. We have to work on that problem. A temporary levy is the way to fund the rebuilding, but we have to make sure our public finances stay strong because the investment pipeline is so strong in this country that we still have an economy which is nearing the limits of its capacity.

That is why a levy is, once again, a responsible thing to do to send a message to the world—to markets—that we mean it when we say that we have strict fiscal discipline in Australia and that we know how to handle recessions on the one hand and natural disasters on the other. On this occasion, what is required is strict fiscal discipline. During the global financial crisis what was required was the courage to put a stimulus in place. What was also required was the courage to put in place fiscal rules to bring us back to surplus when the economy recovered. This is a government with courage. It is a government with conviction. It is a government that puts the national interest before the political interest all of the time.

But sadly we have not seen that in this House today. We have not necessarily seen it in the last week or so. The one thing that demonstrates it more than anything else is the attitude of the Leader of the Opposition to levies. Prior to now there was never a levy he did not support. He has been in this House and supported levies on six occasions. Let us go through them. On 17 June 1996, the Leader of the Opposition stood up in this House and supported a levy for a gun buyback. So, too, I think, may have the shadow Treasurer. On 25 September 2001 there was another levy, to support Ansett employees. Who were standing up in the House supporting that? The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer. And there we were again in March 2000. We had the dairy industry levy. Who was standing up to support that? The Leader of the Opposition.

It goes on and on, but what demonstrates just how absurd, how divorced from reality, how stupidly political and how nakedly opportunistic those people opposite are is that they can seriously come in here claiming they are credible and keeping a straight face after they went to the last election campaign with what? A levy. It was a levy that raised $6 billion, partly to fund maternity leave for people on $150,000 a year, and they have the hide to come in this House and claim they are serious about dealing with waste. What fool would put that sort of program together? What fool would then come into the House and claim they do not support levies after only a matter of months? They walked around the country talking about the need for a levy—and it would not have been temporary when it started. It was permanent. It was only during the election campaign, when the heat was turned up, that it suddenly turned into a temporary levy that was going to be matched by a company tax cut. But the Leader of the Opposition had marched around the country, electorate after electorate, asking for a levy. All those members opposite who are now complaining about a levy were supporting him.

The Australian people can see right through the approach that is being adopted by those opposite. A nakedly political approach, it is not one that the Australian people respect. I believe it is not one that the Australian people will support. That is why I say the Leader of the Opposition is all opposition and no leadership. There is simply no leadership. If he has proved one thing during the events of the last week it is that he is absolutely not fit to lead a country during a time of crisis. His judgment has been flawed all of the way through, from his refusal to condemn the letter that went out in his own name to raise money on the back of the flood victims—quite extraordinary that he could not do that—to all of the other behaviours we have seen in recent days. Then there was yesterday. What this shows is that the Leader of the Opposition does not have the judgment, does not have the temperament, does not have the knowledge and does not have the competence to be a leader of a major political party in this country.

If you wanted to see further evidence of that, it was in the press conference yesterday which the shadow finance minister was banned from attending. They were trying to count moneys that they had already accounted for in their previous discredited packages, so we had double counting. Yes, we had deferrals. The reason I raise deferrals is that we were promised a really big, really tough package. It did not come, because they are so internally divided and so without any knowledge of what must be done in circumstances like this that they just cobbled together a few bits and pieces. Most people simply laughed at it because it was not a serious piece of policy.

We are proud of what has occurred in Australia in recent years. We are proud of the fact that there has been record job creation in this country despite the fact that there has been economic carnage across the developed world. We are proud of what we have been able to do with our public finances. They are the strongest of just about any developed economy. Our net debt is low by international standards—6.4 per cent compared to 90 per cent across other countries. Yes, we went into deficit to support jobs, to support our people and to support our families. Now we are paying it down and bringing the budget back into surplus so we can continue to have a strong economy, so that the investment pipeline remains strong, more jobs are created and more families are secure and prosperous. You need a program in place to support all those things.

In the middle of all of this it came to a head in the last election campaign. They went out and said, ‘We have got $50 billion worth of savings.’ What was the verdict of the Treasury? A $10.6 billion costings con job. Some of it they have had the hide to recycle again. Some of those initiatives are described as ‘savings’ yet again when they are clearly not savings, and that is before you get to the fact that there is about $4 billion or $5 billion of savings they are holding up in the Senate right now. So not only will there be a bigger deficit under what they put forward yesterday; on top of that their starting point is way behind that because they are holding up billions of dollars in the Senate. They are fiscally irresponsible as well as politically irresponsible. What all that proves is that they are the last party you would want in charge in this country when there is a crisis. You certainly could not have had them in charge during the global recession, because if they had had their way our country would have gone into recession and we would not be in the position we are in today to deal with these natural disasters.

They also do not get it when it comes to community. They do not really understand the notion of community—that people want to pull together, people want to help each other and people do not mind paying a modest amount of money to support their fellow Australians who are in distress. But they cannot get over their social Darwinism and they cannot get over the fact that all they care about is the Liberal Party. They will take the cheap route every time. They have done it again and because of all of that they should be condemned and shunned by the Australian people.

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