Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to follow the member for Dunkley and shadow minister for small business and his outstanding remarks. It is such a pity that he was restricted to 15 minutes, because I am sure we would have been entertained for a lot longer on his intimate knowledge of his sector. I appreciate his contribution and I support his remarks when it comes to the challenges that small businesses face. My seat of Mayo is a seat, as the member well knows, that is largely a small business focussed seat. Whether it be Mount Barker, Nairn, Strathalbyn, Victor Harbor, Goolwa, Kingscote or Yankalilla, there are thousands of small businesses in my electorate who are doing it tough at the moment. They were eagerly anticipating a budget and a session of parliament where they would see some real commitment to budgetary reform to ensure that their tax burden would be reduced so that they could have money freed up to allow them to get on with their business, employ more Australians and to see the rigid changes made through the Fair Work Australia system—and aren't they proud of that system now—change so that they could employ more Australians and give more Australians a chance at work. But, of course, they were left utterly despondent by what the Treasurer delivered on budget night.

It is perfectly understandable why they were so despondent. We saw a budget which was a budget of cooked books and very ambitious forecasts—where this government who, over the last four budgets, have delivered massive record deficits are now expecting the Australian people to somehow believe that in this financial year they will be able to turn that around and deliver a massive four per cent reduction in federal government expenditure. No-one accepts that to be true. A budget that has gone from $270 billion expenditure when the current government came to power to some $370 billion or around that mark shows that this government is a government that is spending more money than it takes. It is living beyond its means, which will cause us a problem in the future. You often hear the government say that our debt compared to other countries is nowhere near as bad, that we are in this fortuitous position with low debt in comparison. Households know that you do not compare your own debt situation with your next-door neighbour, you consider what you have to do to make those repayments. What the debt means is that there are large interest payments necessary with that debt, now up to $8 billion a year, which takes away from services and means that Australians pay more tax than necessary to make those repayments and pay back this legacy of Labor debt that we will deal with when we are able to take government.

This budget was a massive disappointment. It showed that Labor has no coherent economic strategy to deliver stronger economic growth and a stronger and more productive economy. We have seen in my local area disappointments as well. Genuine needs like the Bald Hills freeway interchange, the additional freeway interchange because of the growth the state Labor government has foisted upon my local area. That was a commitment I made at the last election and I was hoping that in this budget the Treasurer might have appreciated that Mount Barker needs that additional freeway off-ramp. I have been heartened by the commitment from the opposition shadow transport spokesman, who has given me a very positive indication that as part of our commitments leading to the next election it will be, as a member of the ERC, well and truly be costed, as it was in the last election.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

I can assure that to the member for Moreton . I know that the shadow transport minister will be right on my side in that respect. On the south coast an overwhelming concern in that community is the pool, in the hope that the government and regional development minister Crean would have seen it fit to fund that in this budget. He has not done so. What the Labor Party in government has done, in conjunction with the Greens as their coalition partner, is foist on my community the world's biggest carbon tax which will begin in a month's time.

More worryingly for my state of South Australia and for our country is the impact of federal Labor policies on the mining industry. We hear regularly from the Treasurer that there is some $500 billion of investment in the pipeline for Australian mining projects, and that is true. There are plans to invest heavily in Australia. However, what you do not hear from the government is the more recent announcements from very senior companies in large mining companies talking about putting off a large amount of that investment because of the increased costs that federal Labor policies are putting on these mining companies. The very reason the civil war has broken out in the Labor Party over the last five days in relation to the EMA—

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