David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I was going to speak on some of the policy issues presently facing Australia, but I have to confess at this early juncture that I was so astonished by the performance of the opposition in question time today that I decided it was impossible to allow some of the statements that were made by opposition senators to pass without comment. In question time today Senator Abetz started the ball rolling by asking in his best and most affected sarcastic tone: ‘When will the government deliver a budget surplus?’ What an astonishing question! Does not Senator Abetz recall that the budget brought down by the Treasurer in only May of this year provided for a surplus of $21.7 billion? Of course, the delivery of that surplus is dependant on the passage of the budget through this parliament. And what contribution has Senator Abetz and his magnificent team opposite made to delivering that surplus, that surplus which he argues is so very essential? His contribution has been to block and obstruct the revenue sections of the budget. It is as simple as that. He opposed the luxury car tax. He opposed the tax on alcopops. He opposed measures that contributed more than $3 billion a year to that very surplus he now pretends to worry about.

The Rudd government came to office determined to maintain a strong budget surplus, and it brought down a budget that provided for that very thing: a strong budget surplus. The government wanted a strong surplus in order to put downward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on interest rates. In the economic circumstances of May 2008, that was absolutely the economically sound and responsible thing to do. Let us cast our minds back. The Labor Party and the new Rudd Labor government had found itself custodians of an overheated economy, an economy that had endured interest rate rise after interest rate rise as it struggled to cope with, amongst other things, the flagrant, outrageous and economically irresponsible pork-barrelling of those opposite. Irrespective of the macroeconomic setting that this country needed, those opposite were determined to spend their way out of political problems.

We did not have to maintain a strong surplus. We could have spent that $21 billion achieving other objectives. We could have spent it fixing some of the things that the Howard government neglected for 11 long years. We could have spent it on schools and universities, on infrastructure and vocational training, or even on raising pensions. But we did the responsible thing and maintained a strong surplus. That fact alone puts paid to the socialist fantasists opposite who are concerned that Labor are not the economically responsible managers that indeed we have proved ourselves to be.

And, in that circumstance, what did the opposition do? They did their best to sabotage the surplus by blocking the key revenue elements of the budget in this Senate. Then they raised a noisy, dishonest, hypocritical campaign—a campaign even they were embarrassed about—demanding that we increase the base rate of the pension. Never mind that they did not raise the pension when they had the power to do so.