Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the protection, because I do want to make this contribution after what I just heard from the parliamentary secretary and member for Eden Monaro. His speech was very comprehensive. We heard a great deal about the rorts being put into Eden Monaro through the regional grants program. While I know that not one cent has gone west of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, we have heard about multimillion dollar after multimillion dollar of regional rorts going into Eden Monaro. And this is what I am really surprised by: not once did we hear the words 'carbon tax'. I must read the Hansard tomorrow—I may stand corrected and will make a correction if I am wrong.

This budget did nothing for the real economy of our nation. A budget must address business confidence in this nation. I travel extensively in my vast electorate of Maranoa and small business after small business have said they have no confidence in investing in the future. They do not feel they have a future and any confidence will be dampened down with the introduction of the new tax announced in this budget—the carbon tax to begin on 1 July.

The other thing this budget did nothing about was addressing issues very dear to my heart: the city-country divide and the equality of access to health and education. Research papers which have been written show the numbers out there are quite alarming and are getting worse and worse. I will touch on that later.

This government is very good at introducing new taxes such as the mining tax and the carbon tax. With the huge global uncertainty out there at the moment, Europe is in a fragile state and the American economy is trying to recover from massive debt and record unemployment. But this government wants to smash the very economy that creates jobs and wealth for all Australians by introducing the carbon tax, which will cascade through the system. At every point when people purchase a product—food, electricity, registration and fuel for their car—the carbon tax will have a cascading effect. It will hit every element of our economy. It is not rebated to businesses like the GST at each point of sale. It will be passed on to the next level and consumers will have to pay.

We are the luckiest country on earth. In this global uncertainty why would any government want to hit the very economy that is going to be so important to an improving economy in the future? Is it any wonder that Australian people have no confidence in this Prime Minister? Workers are certainly worried about their jobs, but we know that this Prime Minister is only interested in her job.

The government are predicting a $1.2 billion surplus in the 2012-13 financial year. This time last year they were predicting a $12 billion deficit, which grew to $23 billion and now is $44 billion. If they cannot get last year's figures right, how can we possibly believe that in the forthcoming financial year there will be a $1.2 billion surplus, when they were out by $21 billion in the last financial year? It is just fanciful.

We also know that this government is great at spending money. Also included in the budget papers was a facility to increase the borrowing capacity of the Commonwealth from $250 billion to $300 billion. Try going to your bank and saying: 'We've got to increase our debt,' when you have had deficit after deficit. In fact, this government has not brought forward one surplus. They do not know how to spell the word, I am sure.

See this speech in context