Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

The proposition that Labor is advancing in this matter of public importance discussion this afternoon is that the budget has had an adverse impact on confidence in the Australian economy. It is true that the words of the Treasurer in the 2014-15 budget speech recently did not match the sweeping, the soaring, the inspirational rhetoric that we heard from the previous Treasurer in May 2012, when he said:

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the strength of our economy …

In an uncertain and fast-changing world, we walk tall—as a nation confidently living within its means.

Didn't the pride swell in our collective breasts that our national economic performance was in such a fine hands—the hands of the then member for Lilley. Everything was going so terrifically well. If the rhetoric was so good, surely Swanny's performance would have been even better—it sounded so great as he was speaking; all of us felt that wonderful sense of confidence he talked about. It did require a $45 billion turnaround in just one year, from the $43 billion deficit he was on track to deliver to the $2 billion surplus he was claiming, but if Swanny said it could be done, of course it could be done. How did he perform against that inspirational rhetoric that had us all feeling so proud? What did he deliver? Surely not, it cannot be right—a deficit of $19 billion, in the very year he promised a surplus. And what about the surplus after surplus that was supposed to follow? It was to be $50 billion in 2013-14. Surely not, Swanny.

Is it true that the budget that the Abbott government and the member for North Sydney have brought forward in May 2014 does not quite match that sweeping rhetoric, does not promise perhaps the same almost impossible deliverables? It does not promise impossible deliverables because, as we have seen, when you promise something that is impossible to deliver, you end up with quite a lot of egg on your face. What we have produced, by contrast, is a credible plan forward—a path to reduce the deficit year after year, so by 2017-18 we will have a deficit which is projected to be a mere $2.8 billion. We have a steady and credible path back towards where we need to get, and I might add it is a credible plan from the side of politics that has the track record—the side of politics that in 1996-97 inherited a $6 billion deficit and turned that into a steady stream of surpluses year after year through a calm, consistent, credible performance. That is what confidence in the economy is about; that is what is going to persuade the Australian people that you have the economic management team—the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance in the Abbott Liberal-National government—that is on the case to deliver a credible plan to return our economic position and our budgetary position to where it needs to be.

Of course we could follow the alternative plan that we have heard yet again from the member for McMahon this afternoon—an alternative plan which essentially says not to worry, let's do nothing about it, there really is no problem here, everything is fine, keep moving, nothing to look at here. The member for McMahon suggested that perhaps innovation and entrepreneurship was the solution—we did not have to worry about getting the budget or the deficit under control because innovation and entrepreneurship and a bit more vision from this side of the parliament would apparently solve the problem. The irony of this is rich—this is from the very same Labor Party that under the member for Lilley, in the sad and regrettable days when he was Treasurer, killed off employee share ownership plans in 2009. If there is one complaint that we hear more than any other from the innovation and entrepreneurship sector of the economy, it is the absence of employee share ownership plan arrangements to allow companies here to be competitive with companies in other parts of the world—all because of the ill-judged actions of the member for Lilley back in 2009. On this side of the House we have a clear, credible, deliverable plan which is going to produce the right outcome, and that is the way to maintain and build the economic confidence of the Australian people.

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