Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

He did not mention the Princes Highway. The member for Throsby interjects, asking about the Princes Highway. There is one problem—the shadow Treasurer did not mention the Princes Highway. The Labor Party have an MPI on the failure to invest in infrastructure, they mention not one policy or area of infrastructure and it takes the backbench to interject on their own spokesman to say what he should have said—the Princes Highway. But he did not say it. He had 15 minutes in which to name the projects that we have failed to invest in. He just did not get around to mentioning one—not one road, not one rail, not one tax cut, not one superannuation change and not one IR change. We heard 15 minutes on an MPI which is allegedly about the failure to invest in infrastructure and not one policy was mentioned.

I think it was Gary Gray who said that he thought Labor’s problem was that they were getting white sliced bread politicians—people who come through their organisation, go to Labor Party training schools and come into parliament with no real business experience or no real life experience and no commitment to anything. And when he was talking about it who was he referring to? The member for Perth and the member for Lilley. What they learned at the ALP training school is to get up and complain about everything in the world but to never have a policy.

I invite those people who are sitting in the gallery to think about this: last night for 30 minutes I presented a detailed plan on how this government would invest in the Australian economy with $800 million for the Hume Highway, $220 million for the Bruce Highway, $45 million to do flood works in Tully, $323 million for the Great Northern Highway, money for the East Tamar Highway, $500 million for the Murray-Darling Basin and $220 million for the Australian Rail Track Corporation. I stood here and I enumerated them one by one in relation to rail, road and transport. Then I went on to tax—tax thresholds and tax rates. Then I went on to superannuation, business tax and depreciation. Then I went on to small business changes. I went through them one by one.

You would think that if the Labor Party had a complaint that there were not enough projects they would have come in here at the first opportunity to reply to the budget and say, ‘You were wrong about the Great Northern Highway. That money should have gone to the Princes Highway; it has a higher business case.’ But he did not say that, did he? He could have said, ‘You were wrong about the Murray-Darling Basin Commission because what we ought to be doing is working on rivers up in northern Queensland,’ but he did not. He could have said, ‘You were wrong on superannuation because you should not have changed end benefits; you should have addressed contributions tax,’ but he did not. He could have said, ‘You were wrong about the income tax rate because you moved thresholds too much at the top when you should have moved them down the bottom,’ or, ‘You are wrong about the rate,’ but he never actually had a policy. This is what you get from a white-bread politician—whatever the government has done it is the wrong thing, but what he would do he cannot ever say. Whatever you do, never announce a policy, because if you announce a policy you might be held accountable and that is the one thing to be avoided at all costs by the roosters of the Labor Party. Never be held accountable. If you put a policy out there, people can assess it. They can work out distributionally whether it is better or worse. They can work out who would be the winners and who would be the losers.

In the lead up to this budget, the shadow Treasurer was out there saying what I should do in relation to tax. Somebody put this question to him: what do you think the rate should be? It was not a bad question. He said, ‘I am not putting any rates out there because then Peter Costello would cost them and he would come into the parliament and debate them.’ Fancy actually discussing a policy. He cannot put out a policy. Why? Because I would debate a policy. So he comes in here and engages in 15 minutes of diatribe, allegedly on the failure to invest, without naming any particular project.

I have to say that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was pretty good in question time today. He observed that he has been here for 21 years. I have not been here for that long, but I do not think I have ever seen an opposition run out of questions on the budget at No. 5 the day after. Normally, they try to keep going for 10 questions. Some of you have not been here long enough to know that it did not used to be like this. During budget week—and some of you are newer members—

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