Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the original bill but not the amendments. Sorry to the member for Chifley, but, before I commence I would like to take the eight minutes that the member for Wakefield will never get back in his life and raise him seven, because that was 15 minutes I will never get back, although it is always good to follow him in the chamber—I should not say 'always', because this is the first time it has happened.

I would like to follow on from a couple of points. Coming to the chamber from a different background to the member for Wakefield, I would like to say that he is correct that small and family business will be what drives us forward in this. It always has been and always will be. I note that he made mention of the 'magnificent work' that the previous government had done. One thing he failed to mention was that in the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government we unfortunately lost 413,000 people out of this sector through employment. It is great to be a part of a government that will do its utmost to turn this around because, as the Prime Minister said, we have it in our DNA. But it is also great for me personally, having come from that background.

I cannot help but think that the amendments that have been proposed here, by the member for Fraser, are the latest in an attempt to rewrite the last six years of our history. We came into government on 7 September, and the driving force to get here was the mismanagement we saw over the last six years. If you look at the three years prior, there was a forecast budget deficit in 2011-12 of $22.6 billion and an actual deficit of $43.4 billion—only 100 per cent out! That was actually pretty good. There was a forecast surplus in 2012-13 of $1.5 billion and an actual surplus of negative $18.8 billion. In 2013-14, it was a forecast of 18.8 billion, and, as we sit today, it is $47 billion. I cannot blame them for wanting to rewrite history. I cannot blame them for wanting to run away from their legacy, because if I were them I would be doing exactly the same. However, we do not have the choice to run away from the legacy. We are on the government side of the Treasury benches and we are now responsible.

Through that six-year period there were pink batts—putting them in, taking them out—and school halls. The best school hall story, I believe, was in the electorate of Reid, at Abbotsford Public School—Building the Education Revolution—because it was not actually a hall. I have become close to the parents in that school. They had a four-classroom building and it was proposed that it would be knocked down and we would have another four-classroom building built. They asked, because they were short of classroom space, whether they could keep that four-classroom building and build an additional four-classroom building. But, unfortunately, that did not pass muster, and the money spent at that school replaced, like for like, identically, what was there before. But we all know about the cost blow-outs associated with that.

I do not think there is a better illustration of how this side of government differs from the opposition when they were in government than the NBN. It starts from the top and works its way down. Prior to me speaking, we had the parliamentary secretary for communications. He had an outstanding career, prior to moving into parliament, in communications. The minister that he reports to had an outstanding business career—amongst it, communications. If you are going to put something on the back of an envelope with no cost-benefit analysis and have it blow wildly out of control, I cannot think of two better people than these two to steward it out.

I noted with interest at Senate estimates last week that Ziggy Switkowski mentioned that three per cent of homes in Australia have been passed at a cost of $6.2 billion. If left unattended, it is heading towards $200 billion. That is obviously something we cannot afford, given the parlous answers—which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer mentioned earlier—$123 billion of gross debt and $667 billion.

The ex-government were so in favour of small business, as we heard from the member for Wakefield, that they destroyed the live cattle industry. The FBT on cars in my electorate threatened to destroy the car dealerships along Parramatta Road. Then you come to the greatest electoral fraud ever perpetrated on the people of not only Reid but Australia: the carbon tax. That has permeated its way into the expense side of every P and L of every business, irrespective of size, in this economy. How that plays out in the real world is that you get small and family businesses where those 413,000 people have lost employment in the last six years; you get the mother, the father, and the kids working additional hours.

The member for Wakefield mentioned penalty rates. They are irrelevant to small and family businesses, because we operate in an environment of the law of the day. And I will tell you how this plays out. They either augment the trading hours—they open later and close earlier—or they work additional hours themselves and do not pay themselves. That is how this works out.

He mentioned casual employment. We saw the workforce casualised through the last six years at a rate never seen in our history. We talk about how that plays out in the youth unemployment space. It is all connected. This is microeconomics at its finest. The first job you get out of university—and I am sure the member for Chifley can remember back to his university days—is a casual job. The problem is that what has played out over the last six years—through the carbon tax directly and then every spin-off in every line of every P and L—is that employment and those casual positions have dried up, and youth unemployment in my electorate is running at 20 per cent.

That is a tragedy, a living tragedy, because this is how kids transition themselves and prepare themselves to move into full-time employment and have their own families.

It is even better reading when you actually go and look at the budgets. We often hear about 23,000 more people in the Public Service from the Howard-Costello years to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. But when you go inside these numbers you truly see how it has got out of control. The Attorney-General's Department in 2006-07 had 15,940 people and today it has 18,385. The Department of Health and Ageing had 4,752 and today it has 6,245. These are 20 and 30 per cent increases in departments. Treasury had 27,800 and now it has 29,400 people. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had 5,000 people in the last year of the Howard government and now it has 7,000. But when you actually go inside the line items of the departments you see the difference between the former government and the government of today—and there is no better example, in my humble opinion, than Austrade. Bilateral trade is how we prosper. In 2006-07 Austrade had 1,150 people and today it has 930. It has gone backwards. Then you have AusAID—scary, I know; Austrade and AusAID. AusAID had 518 people in 2006-07, the last year of the Howard government, and today it has 1,982. So the department that works on bilateral trade, growing our economy, went backwards by 10 per cent in employment in the six years of the former government, and the department that spends our money overseas in aid has increased by 400 per cent. I would argue that the 'age of entitlement' that the Treasurer mentioned is relevant not only in Australia; the former government made it relevant worldwide.

Then you come to my favourite, because it affects Western Sydney—Customs. In the last year of the Howard government we had 5,297 people working in Customs. Seven years later we have 5,000—and this hurts. It hurts because we are now screening eight per cent of our air cargo, our mail, versus 62 per cent in the last year of the Howard government. And what do we have in Western Sydney as a result? We have got guns and drugs—to the point where the New South Wales Minister for Police, Andrew Scipioni, who is in the building here tonight, is on record as saying that guns, in particular, are an issue of national significance in Western Sydney. I do not know what we are going to do for Underbelly in the future, because if you want to get a gun or drugs into the country, you mail it to yourself. That just will not sell on TV. As the member for Cook has said, 230 Glock pistols turned up within one month of production in Germany. Here is a newsflash—and I hope the member for Chifley is with me on it: we do not make guns here; we import them. If you want to get away with it at the moment, the best way to do that is to mail it to yourself, because you have a 92 per cent chance of getting away with it. With drugs it is even worse. We do not make them here, either; we import them. And this plays out on our streets. If you look at Western Sydney, my electorate, we have had seven drive-by shootings in the last 12 months. This is real. This is the biggest disgrace that I can find in these figures as a local member. At a time when staffing numbers grew some 23,000 over seven years, something that made real sense to us on the streets of Western Sydney has gone backwards and we have paid the price as a result.

I also love the way the former government, in an attempt to rewrite their legacy, refer to our performance versus other countries in the world. I stumbled across these figures. Earlier the member for Wakefield mentioned Greece and Italy, and he used them offhandedly—the EU countries. Would it surprise you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to know that, in the last six years, we have had in this country GDP growth of 16.7 per cent, terms of trade growth of 18 per cent and a debt deterioration of GDP of 20 per cent? At the same time, the EU has had GDP growth of 1.4 per cent, a negative 1.9 per cent terms of trade increase, and deterioration in their GDP growth has been 22 per cent. So we are line by line, unfortunately, in the one that hurts most—debt deterioration.

This is the issue that I see in the amendments that are attached to this appropriation bill. It is one thing to stand here day after day—be it through amendments to bills, MPIs or whatever other tool the opposition want to use—and have a trip down memory lane about the six years that we had under their guidance. I do not know if you ever watched Happy Days, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I did. I loved that show when I was growing up. What I wish, and what the people of my electorate wish, is that the member for Chifley and all of those opposite were not like the Fonz—because, if you will remember, the Fonz could never say he was wrong. He could not say it. Although the member for Chifley actually said it the other night, and I commend him for it, in reference to Senator Conroy. But, in terms of financial management, they keep getting to the word and stumbling: 'Rrrrrr.' I do not know if you remember, Mr Deputy Speaker. But they were wrong. They were wrong to put this country into debt, they were wrong to attack mercilessly every business, irrespective of size or their P and L, through the carbon tax. They were wrong because of the 413,000 jobs that were lost as a result, and we must not only vote against the amendments in this bill but also carry out the plan that we have to make things right.

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