John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will just make some comments in relation to Senator Gallacher's remarks. Senator Gallacher talked about lack of confidence. He is right: if there is one thing this government has done, it is destroy confidence out there in the business world through its lack of responsible spending. The way it collects the taxpayers' money and then distributes it has been an absolute disgrace. You know all the facts of it, Mr Deputy President. We will go back to the start: GroceryWatch, Fuelwatch, the pink batts, the waste of the government spending on the school programs and the $900 handed out. It just went on and on.

Now they are in serious trouble: $246 billion of gross debt as of last Friday and we cannot even get an educated guess of how much their budget is blowing out. Of the financial year just gone Senator Cormann asked a question: where are you going to fill this $120 billion black hole? You are going out promising the world with Gonski funding for education. We all support decent funding for education. You are squibbing out the chronic dental disease program that was brought in by the Howard government and that has had one million Australians receive dental treatment. It is a program this government tried to knock out a couple years ago but, thankfully, we blocked it in the Senate. There is now nothing for it up to 2014 other than some money for the state public dental system. We know how that is, especially in regional areas.

Let's go back to responsibility and the lack of confidence. When is the government ever going to learn that it is the private sector that derives our nation's wealth, and all you can do is tax the private sector in every way you can? It could be new taxes from day 1, from the alcopops tax to the luxury car tax to the cigarette tax to the LPG tax to the flood tax to the carbon tax to the minerals resource rent tax. You can go on and on. My time would be filled up if I just listed the new taxes. And yet the debt is blowing out and out. Because you have destroyed the confidence, we see business not investing, too scared to have the traditional Aussie go at anything and stick its neck out.

It is because this government cannot be trusted to keep their word. They make the promises—no carbon tax, no increase in taxes—and continually break their word all the time. Senator Gallacher mentioned the charter of budget honesty. I remember two years before the financial year just gone past there was a budget with a $12 billion deficit. Then it became $22 billion. Then the MYEFO discovered it was $32 billion and it came out at $44 billion. If you are running a budget, you budget at $12 billion and it comes out at $44 billion, that is not even a good guess; that is showing ignorance right through the whole financial management of our country. Senator Gallacher wonders why confidence is going. Of course it is going, and it can be turned around overnight at a federal election when the Australian people, especially the business sector, see that once again this country with so much future, with so much potential can be managed correctly under a coalition government. We know the track record. The Australian people know the track record.

I am amazed every time Senator Cameron goes out to bag the former federal Treasurer Mr Costello. Look at Mr Costello's record of paying off the debt and budget surpluses. When he set a budget he was conservative. He allowed for a downturn in business or world commodity prices. He always delivered the budget and more than he budgeted. This government does not know what budget surplus means. Go back over the history of Australia and the financial management of the Labor Party. Look what they did in Queensland, a great state that was managed for decades without a budget deficit. Now they have had their credit rating downgraded, are facing around $72 billion of debt as we speak today with just 4½ million people and are heading down a tube worse. No wonder Premier Campbell Newman has to make tough decisions. On this side of the chamber we refuse to let our states or out nation go down the same road as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Japan, the United States—you name it. We refuse to mortgage our children's future away. We are responsible with managing money, and that is something this government cannot do. That is why the Australian people do not trust this government to manage our great country.