Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before the last election, the member for Warringah promised that if he won government the economy would receive an adrenaline surge. I am not a doctor, but I do know a little bit about adrenaline. Most people know that it is a bodily reaction to fight or flight. It either gives you the energy to fight or it gives you the energy to run away. But adrenaline can also do something else, sadly. I know this from my partner who has worked in child protection for 23 years. Adrenaline can actually freeze you as well. When people are incredibly scared, they actually get a surge of adrenaline and can be frozen on the spot. Unfortunately, child abuse victims often talk about that—the fact that they were frozen.

That is the sort of adrenaline that has hit the Australian economy. It is frozen and it is getting worse. When Labor was in government growth was at 2.5 per cent, and now growth is at 0.2 per cent in the latest figures that came out this week. Under the Labor government there was a budget deficit of $30 billion, and it is now nearly $50 billion. On government debt, we were told by the member for North Sydney that there would be a surplus in his first year, yet government debt is now out to $114 billion, with another $2 billion borrowed this week. Business investment is down 11 per cent. Real wages, throughout Australia, are actually falling. Unemployment, when Labor was in office, was at 5.7 per cent and it is now 6.3 per cent—800,000 Australians out of work. That is a massive number. Let's put it in context: all of Tasmania has 515,000, and if you count every person in the Northern Territory that is 234,000. So if you take every single person in Tasmania and every single person in the Northern Territory and then throw in a couple of other territories as well, like Norfolk Island and the like, you still do not get to 800,000. We know what that means if the household does not have employment.

Have the Liberal and National parties, supposedly the economic managers, been cutting taxes across the nation? Well, let's look at that. The tax-to-GDP ratio has actually increased under the coalition government. They said that they were going to be a low-taxing government.

We remember those famous words delivered at Penrith by the member for Warringah the night before the election, where he said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. It turned out to be a to-do list, that supposed promise to the people of Australia. In terms of flagging a 50 per cent increase in the GST, going from 10 per cent up to 15 per cent, it would especially impact on poorer households.

The supposed economic wonder child that talked up his credentials before the election has turned out to have wreaked havoc across the economy. It will take years to turn around the economy due to the way it has been mishandled. They have focused on things like giving a knighthood to the Queen's husband, as if that is a priority. It is unbelievable.

We have a government that seems to be frozen in place, where the economy is going backwards, but it does not have the ability to talk to the Australian people or to talk to Australian businesses. And now, unbelievably, it has picked an argument with small businesses. I have 19,000 small businesses in my electorate. The government has now picked an argument with COSBOA because of its broken promise on the effects test. It is unbelievable to think that everything touched by this government, in just two years in office, could have such a devastating effect on Australia, especially on our economy, as well as creating division in Australian society.

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