Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This debate on a matter of public importance is a great opportunity to speak about this Labor government's reforms and the good things that we have been doing for the Australian nation. Here we go again, listening to those opposite once again talking down the economy, saying anything, doing anything, just to wreck confidence and wreck jobs for their own political purposes. That is a disgrace. This is a time when the Australian economy is a clear standout. We have seen what has taken place around the world. We saw the US celebrate, with joyous screams, only a couple of weeks ago when its unemployment rate came down to 8.2 per cent. We have seen unemployment in Europe reach staggering amounts—I think it is 10.7 per cent at the moment. We are the envy of world economies, and those opposite, for their own political purposes, talk down the economy and confidence. All they are trying to do is wreck jobs for their own dastardly political interests.

Our economy has grown by seven per cent since the GFC. That is remarkable. It did not happen by us sitting back, folding our arms and saying the GFC was only a hiccup, as the shadow Treasurer said. This was a real issue that confronted us. All of the advice that came from Treasury was that over 250,000 people would be unemployed or lose their jobs and would not be able to pay their mortgages if we sat back and did exactly what those opposite wanted us to do—to fold our arms and just ride it through.

The member for Moncrieff criticised our Building the Education Revolution. When I go to BER projects in my electorate—and I have pretty well opened all of them thus far—I see BER construction sites and building projects that cost $2 million, $1.5 million, $3 million, and at each and every one I ask the same question: how many people were employed on this project site? The answer I get is anything from 50 to a couple of hundred people. When you multiply that by 26,000 across the nation, you can see how we got out of the GFC. We did not get out of it by taking the opposition's advice; we got out of it by taking Treasury's advice. I am very pleased that we did, because today many of those mums and dads still have their jobs, they still have a good economy—one of the best economies in the world—and we are still doing fine compared to the rest of the world. The rubbish that we have just heard from across the chamber is so cynical. They are doing this just for their own political purposes. At the same time they talk down our good economy, one of the best in the world. When the Leader of the Opposition was in London recently, he admitted that we were doing well and that we had one of the best economies in the world.

Our market orientated reforms have been the basis of the greatest changes to Australian life. When we look at our history across Australia, at the improvements to the Australian quality of life that we have seen over the last half century, a lot of those reforms were during the Hawke-Keating years. A lot of the things that were put in place have built the foundations for us today to have a good market economy. Labor has introduced into Australia market oriented reforms that have made us more productive, more flexible and dynamic, more efficient and much more wealthy than we would have been if we had listened to those on the other side. When Labor pursued the market oriented reform of floating the dollar, those opposite opposed it. When Labor pursued the market oriented reform of increasing competition in the finance industry, those opposite opposed it. When Labor pursued the market oriented reform of dramatically increasing our private national savings and private investment, through superannuation, those opposite opposed it. Nothing has changed—they oppose everything. They are, after all, the 'noalition', as they have come to be known, opposing for the sake of opposition. When Labor pursued the market oriented reform of enterprise based wage and productivity bargaining, those opposite opposed it. When, eventually, those opposite assumed the Treasury benches, we saw nothing like the market oriented reform of Labor. We only saw decreasing productivity gains and increasing lethargy.

Labor has continuously, consistently, been the one party in the national debate that has pursued market based reform that actually improves ordinary Australians' quality of life. We saw that throughout the GFC. Labor reform gave rise to a modern, competitive, export oriented economy which was strong and flexible enough to withstand the worst financial crisis the world has seen since the Great Depression. We did that thanks to the market oriented reforms of the Hawke-Keating governments, and we are doing it today as well. Let us not be cute with the truth on that point. Families across our nation survived largely intact through the GFC, which devastated the lives of millions of families in comparable countries around the world. Our unemployment rate was roughly half that of the United States and much lower than Europe's through that period.

Of course, the work of this Labor government contributed substantially to the confidence in the Australian market, in lounge rooms and on showroom floors that saw us sustain our economy and our jobs through the years of the GFC. In contrast to money being wasted, as the member opposite said, we saw our economy get through because of the reforms that took place during the GFC. Just as the Hawke-Keating governments engaged in pro-market reform as the best vehicle to deliver sustainable improvements to the quality of life of ordinary Australians across the nation, so too has this Labor government.

The agenda of taking care of Australia and Australians through taking care of the economic settings and structures remains absolutely fundamental to this government and to Labor. Labor is the party of market reform, unlike those opposite. We embrace the market as a mechanism for the prioritisation of tasks, the allocation of resources and the reward of effectiveness. Consequently, we share our corner—the corner of economic theory and sound economic practice—with the conclusions of the Productivity Commission, Treasury, eminent economists here and abroad and economists throughout our community.

The opposition has in its corner the old guard theorists of command economics, the discredited apologists for Soviet style economic administration, and those who dream of Sugarcandy Mountain, where everything is predetermined, safe, fluffy and nice, guided by the invisible hand slipping into your back pocket. That is the reform of those opposite.

There is no better example of the gulf that exists between Labor's and the other side's approach to economic questions than the policy area of climate change. We heard the member for Fraser talk about it earlier. On the government side, we have a market mechanism, an emissions trading scheme, to drive change on the basis of cost, profitability, innovation and competitiveness, at least possible price to the community as a whole. On the other side, we have a command economy style system where a fat cat sits back and taps winners on the shoulder, picking those of the biggest polluters to whom the opposition would hand over billions of taxpayers' dollars. The Leader of the Opposition says his polluter subsidy scheme is a market approach because, and I paraphrase: 'We'll go to the market to ask for companies to come forward asking for handouts. That makes it a market approach.' Unbelievable. There is no commodity. There is no pricing. There is no trading. There is no engagement bar those lucky few who get a whopping great cheque in the mail. Clearly, there is no market, no market approach and no market based reform by those opposite.

We also have the government's focus on returning the budget to surplus—good for the bottom line and good for the increasing availability of capital for private sector investment. No-one can argue with that. The conservatives supported returning the budget to surplus. They harped on about it for years. Now they would not even do it themselves. If they were in government, they say it would not rank as more than an aspiration at this point in time. In other words, they would continue to deliver deficits year after year. They would continue to spend more than they can afford. That is quite obvious from what those opposite are saying. We cannot know what they are doing. We do not know what their future will be. The other day we heard the member for Curtin, Julie Bishop, tell us, 'That's not what Tony Abbott meant' in relation to a conversation with the Indonesian ambassador. So we do not know what he means half the time. Those opposite would continue to dry up available capital and make it even harder for Australian businesses to invest in their own futures and the futures of their employees and their families.

Let us not forget who all of this is for. It is for the people of our electorates, the people of our suburbs and neighbourhoods, who need that job, who need that pay packet and who need the business they work for to work hard and smart and to make a profit. The people of this nation, the mums and dads, their kids, the uncles and aunts, each rely on jobs, which in turn rely on performance in their respective marketplace and on making a dollar. I support the policies and the market reforms of this government. (Time expired)

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