Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Where do you start when you are talking about the Labor Party's track record on economic management? I think there is no better place than with Dr Kenneth Rogoff from Harvard University, who did an analysis of the increase in public sector debt since these luminaries attained government. The country that had the greatest increase in public sector debt was unsurprisingly Iceland. They have basically sunk into the North Atlantic. Ireland was No.2 and No.3 on the list of countries with the greatest proportional increases in public sector debt was Australia. Below us were other countries that we do not like to mention—Greece, Portugal, Spain and the United States. They were all below us on their proportional increase in public sector debt.

They tell us that they saved us from the recession. I will tell you why we did not go into recession. There are five main reasons. Let us go through them seriatim. There is a red rock called iron ore. We were getting an awful lot of money for it and selling a lot of it. Iron ore was the No.1 reason we did not go into recession. Then there is this black rock from our east coast called coal. We sold a lot that—record amount at a record price. That was the second reason we did not go into recession. Then there were the 31 March shipping figures for wheat. We do not like to talk about agriculture anymore, but the drought ended and record sales of wheat went through. There were two other reasons: a proportionally lower interest rate and a proportionally lower dollar. That is what saved Australia from recession.

Unless Mr Swan can convince the Australian people that buying a flat screen television somehow managed to dig up a tonne of iron ore and put it on a boat, or plant an acre of wheat, or export a tonne of coal, then their argument does not stand. What they did instead was burn down 194 houses with ceiling insulation. Maybe that was a slight stimulus to the building industry. They went on a manic spree of building school halls. I thought that after these school halls were built my daughters would come home speaking French or Latin—Je ne sais pas; pardon monsieur; je ne comprends pas—but they are still speaking the same language I sent them to school with. It did not really stimulate their thinking much; it just gave a whole range of people, such as Reed Constructions, a great ability to rip the Australian people off.

The Labor Party believe in catastrophic climate change, but they do not seem to take into account catastrophic economic change, which is far more predictable. In fact, we were talking about this before the first financial crisis. We had clarion calls from William White of the Bank for International Settlements saying, 'Watch out guys; we are starting to have a few problems with interbank liquidity.' He was saying that prior to the first so-called GFC. We had Dr Paul Woolley talking about financial market dysfunctionality because of the overexten­sion in derivatives. The luminaries of the time, the Tanners and the Swans, were just completely ignoring it. Then it is always a surprise and a wonder when something happens. If you want to understand Mr Swan, it is very simple: half of Wayne Maxwell Swan's life is a promise and the other half of Wayne Maxwell Swan's life is an excuse. You just have to work out which day it is: is it a promise or is it an excuse. It is always one of them.

Let us go through some of his promises. I remember back in the election campaign of 2010 when Mr Speers from Sky was talking to the Prime Minister about what happens if a surplus does not happen. This was what the Prime Minister said: 'Well, failure is not an option here and we won't fail.' The host said: 'But in the event it is not achieved, perhaps it is not achieved, what will you do?' The Prime Minister replied: 'Failure is not an option here. The budget will be in surplus in 2013.' Lately it has been turned into an objective. I wonder how I would say that to my children: 'I was going to feed you tonight—that was a promise, now it's an objective,' or 'I was going to go to work tomorrow—that was a promise, now it's a target as I'm thinking about going to work.' This is the sort of position we have. The Prime Minister, post the 2010 election, said:

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. I agree with him that Australians do deserve a Treasurer with a steady hand, and they have one. They have a Treasurer who has delivered a budget that will return the budget to surplus in 2012-13 exactly as promised.

Promises, promises, promises—don't you love it. And now we have excuses, excuses, excuses.

Now to give the backdown. Last Friday, Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia said:

It makes the challenge of bringing the budget back to surplus in 2012-13 more difficult. But it is certainly our objective to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13 and we expect to achieve that.

Mr Swan said:

Well, it's far too early to make any conclusions, but we will be affected—markets are affected, budgets are affected. But we're committed to bringing our budget back to surplus …

Now it is a 'commitment'. Even Minister Wong said:

There's really only one set of numbers I'm worried about, and that's making sure we get back into surplus by 2012-13 and that's what this budget will do.

She is here today, so it will be interesting to hear from her whether that was a categorical guarantee.

I live in wonder about some guarantees. Remember the war against obesity? What happened to that? Did we win that war? Have we now smote the fat people? Have they gone? No, we lost. We did not seem to win that war. Then the war on Fuelwatch. What happened to that voyeuristic episode? Did we deal with that problem? No, fuel still went up. Then there was the toolbox for the 21st century—remember Kevin Rudd saying, 'This is the toolbox for the 21st century. Every kiddie's got to have one'? What happened to that? Well, they did not get it. They are still waiting. We got half the toolboxes for twice the price. It just goes on and on. The Building the Education Revo­lution was just incredible. The takeover of the hospital system—did we take over the hospital system or is the hospital still winning? Who is winning that fight? Who has taken over the hospital system? And the latest one is: 'She has full confidence in Craig Thomson.' It is incredible. It is quite a mess and it relates exactly to your economic plan.

They had a temporary extension of their debt. We had a $75 billion gross debt. They always like to talk to you about net debt; they will never talk to you about the actual debt. They have this mystical number which they can never actually tell you how they get to. They can never actually give you the numbers. It is out there like the Yowie or the Abominable Snowman. It is one of those things that is out there but which you can never get a photo of. You can never quite get to it. It is not as definitive as Craig Thoms­on's signature. It is out there but it is going to come back some day.

What exactly do we have here? They had a temporary increase in their limit from $75 billion to $200 billion because China was going to go into recession. That is what they said. China did not go into recession, but our debt went from a temporary increase of $200 billion to a permanent increase in our overdraft of a quarter of a trillion dollars, because Australia does not want to feel left out. We want to start talking about out debt in portions of a trillion too. It is only fair and reasonable. That is the sort of thing that the Labor Party wants to do to you. They want to be there with the rest of the world. They want to catch up with them on climate change and catch up with them on debt. They want to make sure that we achieve that objective.

Even in the last speech from Senator Carol Brown she said that it was an issue of no confidence. She had to be corrected by Senator Polley, who walked over and said, 'Don't say the words "no confidence"; I don't think that's quite appropriate at this point in time.' Of course it should not be 'no confidence', it should be 'no competence'.