Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Assistant Treasurer talks about the stimulus measures—I think that is what he is alluding to—which in broad figures saw the budget position expand expenditure by $40 billion in that year. Is it not true that the so-called targeted and temporary measures involving the GFC response were neither temporary nor targeted but that they elevated the floor for Commonwealth expenditure by some $40 billion? It has never turned back. On your analysis, Sir, that would mean that every day that Labor has been in office, we have been in a GFC mode, because there has been no reduction in expenditure or no removal of that GFC stimulus for any of the years that followed. It just represented an elevated floor against which further increases were added. You now claim that those increases were not as substantial as they might have otherwise been, conveniently ignoring the $40 billion uplift in one year under the name of the GFC. Is it not true that those stimulus uplift factors created a new floor for the Commonwealth outlays, that we are now spending $370 billion a year compared to $270 billion a year four years ago, that there has been no restoration of the budget base nor the trajectory that was in place before the GFC, and that all of your comments about modesty in expenditure are completely fallacious because there has been no restoration of the expenditure trajectory prior to the GFC?

On the issue of those outlays and the budget position, may I remind you that you have not delivered a surplus; you have forecasted one. None of your economic forecasts have come within a bull's roar of the end-of-year position. How confident are you that this budget will have some sort of accuracy that belies the track record up to date? What analysis have you done on the sensitivities that you have factored into the budget parameters? I refer to what was a remarkable inclusion under the contingency reserve for budget year 2012-13, which is a sizeable negative number. After some flapping around in Finance estimates, the explanation that was provided for this unusual occurrence was there was a lower than expected March quarter CPI outcome that needed to be factored into the papers and that this was 'received too late in the process to be allocated to individual agencies or functions'. Is this answer accurate and reliable? How is it that this reduced CPI outcome is not reflected anywhere else in the budget or, if it is, can you please point to where it is? Could you give some indication of the size of the downward forecast revision and what this downward forecast revision has meant for revenue? And, to pursue this matter further, in terms of that late revision and the economic parameters that it is supposedly influencing, what are the revenue and growth projections that are now in the budget if you have got that downcast in there covered by a negative contingency reserve amount but it does not appear anywhere else in the budget papers?

I will move on to the budget issue. You touched on debt. If you are claiming it is a surplus, how is it that there is a growth in the debt profile and why are you seeking an increase in the debt ceiling? How is it that the explanation you provided relating to the fluctuations in revenue throughout the year cannot be accommodated by an existing mechanism available to you through the Loan (Temporary Revenue Deficits) Act 1953? How can you credibly say there will be a surplus when you are forecasting a need to increase the debt position? On the issue of the sensitivities regarding the downward revision in GDP, what is the sensitivity to net debt for each year across the forward estimates of a one per cent increase or a one per cent decrease in GDP and where does that leave the final budget position?

On the issue of taxation, you talk about the taxation measures that are included. When was the decision made to abandon Labor's company tax promise? Less than 24 hours before the Treasurer delivered the budget speech, the Minister for Small Business claimed that that was still part of the budget and, when asked why 92 per cent of small businesses feel that no government policy is helping them, reached for that measure. Being on the Expenditure Review Committee, he must have known that that was not the case, so why was he not being straight with people? That is probably why the member for Deakin has circulated that information. What is the status of the company tax cuts?

Finally, doesn't your budget confirm the abolition of the entrepreneurs tax offset, which will put up the level of taxation on the income of about 400,000 of Australia's smallest businesses? How is that assisting small business, in the manner you claim, in distributing the proceeds of the mining boom?

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