Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I do not believe they are cooking the books; I think they have cooked the books. They are not cooking; they have been burned in the microwave. It is amazing! The government brought forward the disaster relief payments for Queensland at $1.4 billion. That means it is spent this year, and the deficit gets worse this year. They have brought forward $1.4 billion on infrastructure spending for New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. It was meant to be next year but it is now this year, and they have been engaging in other tricks in other areas.

This chicanery all adds up. This trickery all adds up. What it means is that the government is trying to make this year's deficit worse. Next year, they are going to claim to have a surplus, but the problem is that they have built in structural expenditure. In the year after and the year after that and all the years after that the spending gets larger and the debt burden gets higher. All they are trying to do is trick the Australian people into believing that they will have a sustainable surplus next year when the truth is that they are building tricks into the budget.

The other thing we will be looking for on budget night is new or increased taxes. I know it is hard to believe, but the Labor Party loves new taxes. They love increased taxes—in fact they have had 20 of them since they were elected in 2007. Of the $22 billion in announced saving measures in the last budget, a third were from new or increased taxes. As I have said before, the $38 billion surge towards a surplus in the coming year is overwhelmingly higher taxes.

We will also be looking for waste. Where in its $370 billion of expenditure is the government finding the savings and cutting back? We all know the story: a $1.7 billion blow-out on school halls, $2.4 billion wasted on pink batts, $900 cheques going to dead people or to people living overseas, a $1.4 billion blow-out in laptops in schools, an $850 million blow-out in the solar homes program, $300 million wasted in green loans programs and they are giving set-top boxes to people at up to $1,500 each when Gerry Harvey said that he would personally go around and install them for $170. Only this government would do it.

There is the broadband costing of $50 billion with no business plan, and what about $40 million for bike paths? Leo McLeay would have loved having a proper and decent bike path, wouldn't he? As we heard in question time, the government is spending $145,000 to study sleeping snails; $340,000 to see whether climate change is affecting the fiddler crabs; and $314,000 to see whether birds are shrinking—they are certainly not Ingham's chickens. They are not shrinking, are they? They are all on the 'roids'. No, they are not. Last but not least, there is $578,000 to research an ignored credit instrument in Florentine economic, social and religious life in the 1500s.

This is the Labor way: waste of taxpayers' money and absolute disregard for the hard work and effort of everyday Australians who have to pay that tax. This is the Labor way: chicanery and trickery in the budget numbers in order to try to fiddle the surplus promised for the next financial year by moving money around—but at the end of the day there is the structural expenditure. This is the Labor way: to make promises that are not delivered—and the promises that are made are never kept. It is the Labor way to be dishonest with the Australian people not just about the carbon tax, not just about the events on Australia Day this year involving the tent embassy and not just about the member for Dobell; it is the Labor way to be dishonest about the state of the nation's accounts. What that leaves is a nation bewildered by its incompetent government, a nation that does not understand the lack of direction out of Canberra and a nation that does not have the confidence to grow as its destiny determines. (Time expired)

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