Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The other day I was looking at Twitter. There was a very interesting tweet from an individual quoting the Economist from 1848. What the Economist said in 1848 was 'Suffering and evil are nature’s admonitions; they cannot be got rid of'. That is what the Economist magazine said about the introduction of the sewer. You can be sure that whenever there is some form of progress in human affairs there will be some conservative out there saying: 'The sky's going to fall. You can't fix these problems. It's all too hard. It'll all cost too much. It's the end of the world as we know it.' Haven't we just heard that from the previous speaker? He got up there with a long list of jobs. He was all grim. He talked about armageddon and all the rest of it. He talked about Mitsubishi, which closed in 2008, in discussing the carbon price.

There is a fair bit of disingenuous conduct going on over there among the opposition on these matters. That is because they cannot win the substantive argument that is going on not just in Australia but around the world. That argument is, on one hand, jobs, growth and investment and, on the other hand, austerity, recession and the downward spiral of disinvestment. That is the choice that Australia has and that indeed is the choice that is having to be made around the world. This country during the GFC made the right choice. That is why we have an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent. That is why we have seen growth in our economy. That is why we have seen business investment in our economy. That is why around the world Australia is regarded as something of a lone survivor of the GFC period. Look at the nations that have embraced the austerity policies of the opposition. The United Kingdom had a jobless rate of 7.8 per cent the last time the figures came out. That country has zero growth.

As their economy fails to grow, their ability to service their debts lessens. That is what is happening in the United Kingdom.

If you look at Europe, where they have embraced austerity, you will see 50 per cent youth unemployment rates in places like Spain and Greece. The choice that the world has had—it has been no different since the depression—is about how you tackle these periods that occur periodically in capitalism. There was the global financial crisis and, before that, the Great Depression. The right way to embrace it is through Keynesian economics—that is, to support growth and economic confidence and to use the benefits of economic growth to service debt. The wrong way to go about it is to try to cut your way out of trouble—to try to cut government expenditure—because cutting government expenditure destroys growth in your economy, and, as you destroy growth, your capacity to service any debt goes downwards.

The approach of the opposition was best espoused by Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. What he said was, 'Liquidate labour, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate; purge all the rottenness out of the system.' That was the approach of conservatives in the 1930s and that is the approach of conservatives now. They have not learnt a single thing along the way from these great crises in capitalism.

It is a critical point that you are always better growing your economy to service your debt. You heard the Leader of the Opposition in question time today referring to the nation's credit card. Of course, it is completely misleading to the public to talk about household budgets and credits cards. A nation's economy is not a household budget, and it isn't a credit card. If you are going to use those sorts of analogies, a much better analogy is to say, 'It's like a young person taking out a loan to go to university, to get higher skills to get a higher income to produce more to be able to service that debt.' That would be a much better analogy to make than the one that is made constantly by those in opposition, which is based on the idea that there is some sort of fixed amount of money and some sort of fixed debt and your capacity to service it is best served by cut, cut, cut. I tell you: it is not. The proof is in the pudding. Go to the United Kingdom. Look at what they have tried over there. They have tried exactly what you are going to do, and it has been a dismal failure.

There is another debate going on around the world, and that is about how best to deal with climate change. You have two choices here. You can deal with it through a market mechanism, which this nation has done. Electricity emissions have dropped by 8.6 per cent since the carbon price was introduced, jobs have been created—I will go through the figures later on—and investment has continued and the ASX risen. The market mechanism is sending a price signal to people—to companies and consumers alike—and that puts the onus on the polluter.

The other alternative is to have big-government plans. In this case the opposition wants to have a big-government subsidy to polluters. In effect they are saying: 'We're not going to leave it to investors, markets and businesses to deal with this problem. We're going to leave it is politicians and bureaucrats.' Common sense would tell you that a price signal and markets are a much better way of dealing with this issue and a much better way of sorting out climate change; and around the world we are now starting to see price signals being put into place. In China, in California and in other places around the world, this is the way the world will deal with climate change.

Having gone through all of this debate and legislation, and having had the parliament's attention on it, the opposition intends to tear up the government's reforms—to unscramble the egg and to cause massive dislocation to the economy of this country and the business community of this country by tearing it all up. They are going to cut pensions. They are going to put their hands into the pocket of every low-income earner in the country and put them back into the tax system—one million people going into the tax system. But for what? Look at the facts. Do not listen to me; listen to Stephen Koukoulas from the Climate Spectator, who said that since the carbon price has been put in the Australian Stock Exchange has gone up 25 per cent—that is, by $296 billion. It paid out $30 billion in dividends. House prices have gone up 2.8 per cent since the carbon price came in, and that adds about $110 billion to household wealth. So the gains overall are about $410 billion in the eight months, which is about $50,000 per household. That does not sound like disaster to me. It does not sound as if the world is going to cave in. As I said before, in electricity emissions there has been 7.6 million fewer tonnes of carbon—an 8.6 per cent drop.

Look at the facts that the parliamentary secretary read out before. There have been 133,000 extra jobs—more than 20 extra jobs every hour since carbon pricing started. There have been 118,000 new companies—20 every hour. Company share prices have grown strongly, as I said before, and growth has been at the rate of 3.1 per cent. There has been low unemployment—5.4 per cent: the envy of the world. There were 71,000 jobs created in February alone.

This is an economy that is operating exactly as it has always operated. It has taken the carbon price in its stride. We know that the Henny Pennys from the opposition want to go out there and talk everything down. We heard the member for Boothby talk about Holdens. Those on the opposite side of the chamber come in here with all this doom and gloom and concern, but the very same people criticised Holden workers getting a pay rise. The very same people were crying crocodile tears over job losses.

Those on the opposite side of the chamber do not talk about the Holden Cruze coming off the line. They do not talk about the new model Commodore. They do not talk about the exports to the United States of police cars and performance cars. They do not talk about the two new models that we have locked in, maintaining production at Holden until 2022. The most important thing a government can do is co-invest to ensure a billion dollars worth of investment down there at Holden at Elizabeth.

The member for Boothby comes in here. But they do not have an automotive policy—and the policies they do have terrify those in the automotive industry. For him to come into this chamber and talk about jobs is just ridiculous. The choice around the world is growth and jobs and investment versus austerity and recession. That is the choice that we face, and the opposition insist on embracing austerity and recession. It is a fool's errand, and the people of Australia will find that out.

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