Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

Let us be clear about what has happened today to Australian families, because while this government tries to blame everybody else for its own failings the Australian public, working families, have been slugged by this government. They have been slugged by the impostor of a Minister for Finance and Administration, Senator Minchin, who is incapable of saying no to the Prime Minister. He is a doormat to the Prime Minister. As Alan Mitchell said in an article yesterday:

The Prime Minister’s claim that his government is in the clear because it is running a budget surplus and that it is all the fault of the states and their budget deficits is nonsense.

He went on to say:

After adjusting for Treasurer Peter Costello’s accounting fiddles, the federal government’s cash surplus is budgeted to fall by almost 1 per cent of gross domestic product this financial year. However, even that does not fully capture the extent to which the Howard government’s budget decisions will add to the pressures on the economy.

Let us be clear: yesterday the Financial Review exposed the impostor of a minister for finance. Jim Cairns did a better job than you are doing; you look profligate next to Jim Cairns, Senator Minchin. You cannot say no to a Prime Minister.

Let us go through the list of the $7 billion of expenditure since the budget—not included in the budget but since the budget: for the Northern Territory Indigenous community intervention, $2 billion; for Commonwealth Disability Assistance, $1.4 billion; for broadband access, $358 million; for school solar tank revamps, $336 million; for the RAAF Amberley redevelopment, $331 million; for the C-17 facilities, $268 million. And it goes on and on, totalling nearly $8 billion. There has been $8 billion of new expenditure since the budget, which was already out of control. Is it any wonder that the Australian public thinks, according to Mark Textor, that this is a deceitful government and that the Prime Minister is untruthful? Is it any wonder that the Prime Minister’s own pollster is telling him that?

You just have to go to the recent biography of the Prime Minister, where Mr Costello was talking about the lavish expenditure engaged in by the Prime Minister during the election campaign three years ago. What did Mr Costello have to say about Mr Howard’s promises during that election? He said:

I have to foot the bill and that worries me. And then I start thinking about not just footing the bill today but if we keep building in all these things, footing the bill in five, and 10 and 15 years and you know I do worry about the sustainability of all these things.

The Australian public are worried about it. The financial markets are worried about it. And, most importantly, today the Reserve Bank showed it is worried about it. The Reserve Bank showed that it is so concerned that it put up interest rates for the ninth time in a row. And you just have to listen to the economists in the market passing their judgement on this government, on Senator Minchin—the man who is in charge in this country of saying no.

What do the economists say? They had warned that a pre-election spending binge coming on top of the additional $36 billion of tax cuts and higher benefits in May’s budget could feed inflation by fuelling demand at a time when the economy is already stretched. What did Ken Henry, the Secretary to the Treasury, say to his own troops this year? He said that expansionary fiscal policy in such an environment would tend to ‘crowd out private sector activity putting upward pressure on prices and interest rates’. Because this finance minister is a failure, because he makes Jim Cairns look like a good Treasurer of this country, because he cannot say ‘no’—