Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection, because China is, of course, an important part of our economy. Where have you been for the last 20 years? It is as if the member has just thought of it. The genius on the other side has just thought of saying 'China' because he thinks it has never been mentioned in this place before. Just like every other economy, China has its ups and it has its downs. If you have a look at the data you will notice that China has gone from plus 11 per cent growth to 10, to nine, to 8½, to eight, to 7½ per cent. While China remains a key part of our economy, it is not the only thing that we have and need to maintain.

Opposition members interjecting—

This is the sort of interjection we get from the geniuses across the other side. Come up with something new! A year 12 student doing a report can come up with just saying 'China'. So, even though all of these things have taken place—

Opposition members interjecting—

Don't you love it when you get their backs up? Don't you just love it? Don't you love it when you have hit that raw nerve? In 10 minutes they will be up; of course they will.

While all this has been going on globally we have met those challenges, but we have done a little bit more than that. If that was all that we had done then I would probably agree that we just had not done enough. It is not good enough just to say that we have tried to maintain growth—and we have done that—or, since we came to government, create a further 800,000 jobs. If that was it, if that was all that you did, maybe you would be open to some criticism that said, 'Well, you just haven't done enough.'

We did a lot more. When we came to government in 2007 we acknowledged something that had been hanging in the community for more than 20 years—through previous governments—that pensioners were doing it really tough and needed a massive increase. It was a Labor government that delivered that, and continues to deliver that. You cannot just wash that away and put it to one side and say that we did not manage economic growth. In our time in government we saw the creation of 800,000 jobs while the rest of the world lost 28 million jobs. Other economies were going backwards by miles and we had a resilient economy. It is still tough here; we all understand that. This is the point of this. It is still tough here and we still have a lot of work to do. But you need a government that can acknowledge this stuff, work with not only the good news in the good years but also the bad news in the tougher years, and that is what we have done. In fact, we have been recognised for that.

While the opposition were in government for almost 12 very long years—and they crow about their successes—not once could they achieve a triple-A rating across all three ratings agencies. Why is that? Because they did not do a good enough job. It is not good enough to just have money flowing in. What are you doing with it? What are you creating out of that money that is flowing in? Your task is not just to be a simple tax collector; it is about being a wealth creator. It is about creating jobs, creating an economy, productivity, innovation, supporting science, supporting education and supporting families. These are the tough things that we have to do. It is easy to do them when there is plenty of revenue coming in. It is just a little bit harder when those revenues start to diminish.

Opposition members interjecting—

There is volatility and no-one can argue the volatility case. I will accept that if interjectors from the other side want to come in about volatility, iron ore prices, coal prices, resources and the high Australian dollar. We talk about this every day. You are not telling me anything new. But let's at least be honest about the facts, about the challenges that we all face and about what your response is. What is your response? What are you actually doing?

I am pretty proud to talk about our government's response and the things that we have done. Things that we have done include making sure we have a strong enough economy that has seen successive interest rates fall—decrease—which gives scope to the Reserve Bank of Australia. That means that, since Labor have come to government, families on a home loan mortgage of $300,000 are saving about $5,000 a year. They are saving $5,000 a year more than when the Liberals were in power. That is the difference. At the same time we have tripled the tax-free threshold. For ordinary people it is no longer $6,000; it is $18,200. That is the tax-free threshold. We have gone out there and we have recognised the need that, if you are going to keep an economy strong, you have to empower the people, empower the families by giving some of their hard-earned money back to them, and that is what we have done through the tax-free threshold.

It does not end there. We have recognised cost-of-living issues and pressures. So, what do you do? What is one of the direct ways you can help families, even in tough times? Sometimes you have got to help them a little bit more. You have got to make sure the economy keeps going and you do it through education. What better place could you do it than through education. The School Kids Bonus directly helps families, directly helps young mums and young dads and kids. One of the things that this mob is going to do if they get in is take that away.

The opposition have a big, giant crater of promises they have made, $70 billion worth, that they cannot fund. It is in black and white. That is what the shadow Treasurer said. How are they going to fund this? Easy. They will strip things away. They will strip away the bonuses for families. They talk about the different elements of how they are going to return to a surplus, but you have to go to the detail of what they are saying. They do not give you a date of when. They made a promise of guaranteeing there would be a surplus in every year of a coalition government, except now they have back-pedalled a little bit. Now they say, 'Well, it's when we can afford it.' There is no date, and they say, 'Well, we'll see.' So it has gone from the rock-solid guaranteed promise of 'every single year' to 'suddenly it doesn't happen' and then 'we will just see what happens in the future.'

I want to remind you about something else, which is really important. How do you build the nation? What do you do for the country? Things like NBN, great infrastructure projects. This government has spent more in two terms—in three terms—on infrastructure than any other government in the past has spent in any of its terms.

Opposition members interjecting—

That is true. I am thinking ahead already. We have done more in those terms in delivering on infrastructure, but there is something that is really important in those two terms since we came to government, and that is that the economy today is 13 per cent larger than when we came to office. We have actually grown the economy. It is not something you can argue; it is just a fact—it is 13 per cent larger. You also have to flick the coin the other way and look at what these guys are going to do. They have already told us what they are going to do and it is going to hurt families.

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