Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the second time today I have followed the member for Ballarat to make a speech. She, like me, represents an electorate with a major regional city—in her case it is Ballarat and I represent Wagga Wagga in the seat of Riverina. Ballarat and Wagga Wagga are not dissimilar inasmuch as they are both really important economic hubs in agricultural regions and regions with diverse economies.

I am sure that when the member for Ballarat goes down her main street she, like me—when I journey along Baylis and Fitzmaurice streets—hears stories about how difficult it is for families to meet day-to-day cost of living pressures. I listened to her speech very carefully, and much of it centred around blaming the Victorian Department of Health for, she alleged, not putting forward Commonwealth money into important medical funding, hospitals and the like. But that is what we are hearing so much from the federal Labor government—that is, blaming the states. We hear what a terrible job Campbell Newman is doing in Queensland and Barry O'Farrell is doing in New South Wales and Ted Baillieu is doing in Victoria. Those three premiers inherited parlous state economies following on from wasteful Labor state governments.

I am sure when the Liberal-National coalition is re-elected federally—hopefully this year—we will, unfortunately, also be lumped with an economy with huge debt and deficit which will take some recovery and which Mr and Mrs Average will expect us to fix. The way things are going, many people's grandkids are going to be paying off the debt that has been racked up by this federal Labor government. We are all familiar with the phrase 'another day, another dollar' but at the moment it is 'another day, another $106 million' that we are having to borrow to make ends meet. Anyone who has run a small business, as I have, knows that you cannot spend more than you make. Unfortunately, that maxim does not fall in the lap of the Treasurer, who continues to borrow—offshore mostly—to make up for his waste and mismanagement of the economy. When he announced the mining tax on 2 May 2010, the iron ore price was $161 per dry metric tonne. In January 2013 it was $150, a reduction of seven per cent. Thermal coal was $100 per tonne in May 2010 and in January 2013 it was $93, a reduction of seven per cent. The mining tax covers only iron ore and coal. The Treasurer said in his recent press conference:

The data being released today shows that the MRRT has collected less revenue in its first two instalments than was forecast originally. Now clearly, the huge drop in commodity prices in the second half of last year had a dramatic impact on MRRT revenues …

There has been no huge drop in commodity prices since the mining tax was announced, and yet, despite all the fanfare around the introduction of the mining tax and Labor saying that people were going to get their fair share of mining tax revenue, it has really returned only $5.50 per person. If you put in a tax and get only $5.50 per person, the tax obviously is not working—according to the Treasurer's own figures.

This government's atrocious record in finance is well known, and it seems that every day that Labor makes an announcement it is another embarrassing gaffe for those opposite. The first amongst these is the fact that when Labor came to office in 2007 it inherited a $20 billion surplus and $70 billion worth of net Commonwealth assets.

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