Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to say, for the benefit of those who are perhaps new to this chamber, that we just heard a paid political advertisement about what Labor might do after the election. That's fair enough, except that I can talk about what the government has done over the last six years to bring about over a million new jobs. We've brought about an unemployment rate which is hovering around five per cent. We've brought a lot more people into the labour market. More women than ever are participating in the labour market. We can talk about what happens to incomes. Incomes are a multiple of wages and jobs, and jobs have been going up all this time. Fuelling those jobs is the fruit of 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth, something that we have a challenge to continue.

What we will be doing at the election, if we want to talk about elections, is talking to the Australian people about the fact that it is a referendum on whether they want the policies which have produced over these six years of economic growth, employment, rising incomes for Australians and rising living standards through more people being in work, reducing the levels of welfare dependency, or whether they want put in place a whole series of programs which seek to raise taxes—allegedly to increase spending—and raise costs whether that be through environmental policies or increased regulation across other sectors of the economy. That's what regulation does: it increases costs. Nothing is costless.

The opposition put out an environment policy yesterday without a single model or costing. There was no indication, industry sector by industry sector, of what they would have to contribute in the abatement tasks that were set under the climate change policy and what that might mean in output and jobs. That's a mere detail, allegedly, which will be left until after the election, and that is the worry. We're being sold a pig in a poke. We're being told: 'Trust me. Just worry about the high-level aspirations behind our policies and the detail—the concrete detail—will be done after the election.' Well, this government has spent six years dealing with the concrete detail, putting in place the detailed policies that, tonight, will lead to the first surplus since the last Howard government, and that is important.

Setting up the place for surpluses, not as an end in themselves, will allow us—through the economic cycle—to raise money when times are good so that, when times go bad, we have an insurance policy to fall back on. We got through the global financial crisis because we had an insurance policy. We had no net debt because the Howard government, in its early days, had taken the hard decisions to rein in spending and find appropriate revenue bases. That's what it took. It took those hard decisions, and it's taken hard decisions over six years—firm expenditure restraint, the greatest expenditure restraint in 50 years, coupled with the recovery in revenue that is going on in the economy—for us to be on the trajectory to surpluses, which could mean, by the end of the decade, that we may have no net debt. The importance of that is, for the next time there's a national downturn or we're subject to an adverse external shock, we will have the shock absorbers in our budget to deal with it. That's what that's about. It's going to be a great legacy to our children and grandchildren. And going with that will be a legacy of a record $75 billion infrastructure package, which is going to be an investment in the productive capacity of the economy. Yes, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can have a better budget and you can spend on essential services and priorities, and that's what this government will be doing in the budget tonight.

Let's just finish on this point about Labor's policies. Labor says, 'We're being economically responsible. We're going to spend more, but we're going to tax more. We're going to have higher surpluses than the government.' The only problem with that is—as the economy now is delicately poised—if we run through $200 billion worth of more taxes and if we create bigger surpluses than the government is projecting—if that's what Labor want to do—that will actually be a break on the economy at a time when we need a steady economic policy which will see us through the potentially choppy times ahead.