Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

You still have a bit of time left, mate. In your dreams—the Milky Bar kid is dreaming again. This discussion on a matter of public importance is about political instability and export performance. Let us have a look at the political instability that exists in the Labor Party ranks. We have the Leader of the Opposition who only has an approval rating of 25 per cent and who is only one caucus meeting away from sitting back on the backbench. The member for Griffith—and this is why he is running this MPI; the member for Griffith is going to run out and have a Milky Bar now—is on 27 per cent. He wants to try to get past the member for Lalor, the Manager of Opposition Business, who is on 31 per cent. She has not helped herself today as she has been put out of the House for 24 hours. That is the opposition. That is the sort of political stability they are putting forward.

Since we have been in government, look at the form on the front bench in the leadership of the Australian Labor Party. When we won office in 1996 we had Mr Beazley, then we had Mr Crean, then we had Mr Latham—we can all read about Mr Latham’s escapades—and now we have Mr Beazley back again. When we look at the research about Mr Beazley, we see the member for Lalor breathing down the neck of the member for Brand, we have the member for Griffith breathing down the neck of the member for Brand and we have the incoming member for Maribyrnong who is going to breathe down the neck of the lot of them. So, if you want to have a look at some political instability, you need go no further than the Australian Labor Party.

We all remember the former Leader of the Opposition, the then member for Werriwa, when he described the sickness that infects every level of the parliamentary Labor Party. He has written about it in his book and he has put it out there for all to read. It is a description of political instability and it exists from top to bottom in the Australian Labor Party. He pointed out that more than 30 of the Labor MPs and senators in this parliament think of themselves as factional powerbrokers. Their only interest is in securing factional advantage, not in making policies that would benefit the Australian people. That is his view, not my view; I am just repeating it. He has written that about all of the front bench and all of those involved in the recent warfare that has taken place in Victoria that has seen two frontbenchers lose their preselection. The member for Hotham only just, by the skin of his teeth, salvaged his. The Labor Party ought to be the last group of people in this place to talk about political instability.

The rest of this discussion is about export performance. The member for Griffith can come in, spin his wheels and talk about all sorts of statistics and percentages, but the reality is that, in 1996, the value of Australia’s exports was $99 billion. In 2005, their value was $177.5 billion. When you reconcile those figures with the percentages and statistics that the member for Griffith was spinning, if you have a look at today’s statistics, there is an improvement in the balance of trade. Our exports rose in the month of April by five per cent or increased by $799 million to $16.9 billion in April this year. This was the highest April level on record. This was the second highest level of monthly exports on record. So we are continuing to set higher standards in the value of our exports going out of Australia.

What did that consist of? It consisted of an increase in resource exports, yes. On the one hand, the Labor Party like to slag off at the government about taking the benefits of the resource boom, yet, on the other hand, they ask us to protect Australia against the competitive advantages that other countries have, such as cheaper labour markets. But one of the competitive advantages that Australia has is that we are well endowed with resources and energy and we have a perfect right to take advantage of them when there is an upswing or boom in the resources cycle across the world. Of course we are going to factor that into our figures. Of course we are going to work hard to ensure that we capitalise on that for the benefit of the entire nation.

The Labor Party like to rail against what they see happening to manufactured exports. In the month of April, manufacturing exports rose by three per cent to $3.4 billion. We have continued to see an increase in the growth of exports of fully built-up motor cars and automotive parts that have taken place under the programs that this government has put in place since the late 1990s to help restructure the automotive manufacturing industry in this country and launch them into export markets across the world and into opening up markets. The classic example of that is Toyota. Toyota Australia is one of the best exporting components of the Toyota network into the Middle East particularly. That cannot be ignored. The growth in the volume of exports of Toyota product out of Australia, as with all automotive products out of Australia during recent years, took place after this government put in an industry policy. The member for Griffith was bragging about the industry policy implementation of the Australian Labor Party and what they did when they were in office. This is an industry policy that this government put in place that has helped put the automotive manufacturing sector where it is. We put that in place in the late 1990s.

I spoke about the political instability that exists in the current Australian Labor Party in this place. Let us cast our minds back to the economic instability that they wreaked on this nation when they were in office for 13 years that saw massive unemployment of 10.9 per cent. These are undeniable statistics. Under Labor, unemployment peaked at 10.9 per cent in 1992. In contrast, the coalition has reduced unemployment to 5.1 per cent. That is a statistic that the Labor Party could only dream about in their term in office. That is about the lowest level of unemployment in 30 years.

Going to management of the budget, we all recall the last budget that the then Labor government brought down. When we came to office in 1995-96 there was a $10.3 billion budget deficit compared to a surplus of $10.8 billion that we are forecasting in 2006-07. We have continued to deliver budget surpluses to help strengthen the Australian economy, to lift our international credit rating and to assist Australian companies that borrow offshore to compete internationally. We have improved the economy in Australia. For 10 years we have been reminding the Labor Party and the people of Australia about the debt that was left by the Labor government when they left office in 1996—a debt of $96 billion that the taxpayers of Australia have had to pay off over that period. The Labor Party love to rabbit on about the national debt that the private sector owes. The debt that is the most important to Australian taxpayers is the public sector debt that they have to service, and they have been servicing it for years as a result of mismanagement by the Australian Labor Party. We have eliminated that debt. We have retired that debt to the point that we are now saving roughly $8 billion a year in interest that we were paying to service that debt.

Of course, one of the great legacies that the Labor Party left this country was how they wrecked small business and farming businesses with their high interest rate policy. They believed that the economy was heating up too much, so the then Treasurer and later Prime Minister Keating decided he would slow it down. He slowed it down all right—he slowed it down with a sledgehammer. He said, ‘I’ve got the levers in control of this.’ He was controlling interest rates at the time and saw them peak at 17 per cent—interest rates that are undreamt of today. There is a generation of Australians now who cannot recall how personally damaging those interest rates were during the period of the Labor government. It is our responsibility to continue to remind them.

We should not just be talking about the political instability that exists in the Labor Party today; we should be talking about the economic instability that was their legacy for this nation of Australia when we came into office in 1996. Importantly, we have worked very hard since then to strengthen the Australian economy, to improve the circumstances, to introduce reforms and reform the taxation system. As you would well remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, we removed $3.5 billion worth of taxes off the back of Australia’s exports. Just imagine if they were still trying to carry that burden and compete in the international marketplace.

If I can just reiterate: along with those statistics, which were the legacy of the Australian Labor Party when we came into office in 1996, their legacy was $99 billion worth of trade exports and today we have $177 billion worth of exports. Of the 1.7 million jobs that have been created in the Australian economy since 1996, about 320,000 of those have been generated through our strong export performance. So our exporting industries are also contributing to jobs growth in this country. The Labor Party in office could have only dreamt about that level of jobs growth—the creation of 1.7 million new jobs—in the Australian economy. Over that period we have strengthened the domestic economic circumstances to give strength to Australia’s exporters to compete in global markets. We have not been lazy on trade policy by putting all our eggs in one basket and just thinking about the multilateral system. We have continued to put our energy into improving the circumstances in the multilateral system and we are on the verge of doing that at the moment, I believe.

We also embarked, as the member for Griffith indicated, on a series of bilateral trade negotiations, which not only opened up new opportunities but also consolidated our position. He referred to the US free trade agreement. That is fine because I will respond to his comments about the US free trade agreement. There are two key statistics that resulted in those figures for last year, and they had nothing to do with the negotiated agreement we put in place at the beginning of 2005. One key point was the shift in exports of beef from the United States to Japan. We dominate the Japanese imports of beef today. Almost 100,000 tonnes of beef went out of the American market into the Japanese market because it was a higher value market. That is what business does. It is not the responsibility of the government; it is the responsibility of business to look for the best market across the world. There was a big drop in exports of oil from Australia to Hawaii that are part of those statistics.

Make no mistake: our businesses, particularly our service providers getting into the US market and being treated the same as American companies in that market, getting access to the massive government procurement programs in the United States, will continue over time to deliver benefits—as will our negotiated outcomes with Singapore and Thailand, those that we are working on with the other ASEAN countries and indeed China. Just remember that there are two aspects to this policy. One is consolidation in our key markets and opening up new opportunities in those key markets. But there is also the effect that bilateral negotiations have on energising the multilateral system. Competitive liberalisation has been needed to drive and create a stronger focus to deliver an ambitious outcome in the multilateral system, something that I know the Australian Labor Party support. They supported the Uruguay Round of negotiations. Both sides of politics agreed on that.

We have experienced strong economic circumstances in Australia, recognised globally, that have given us a strong exchange rate—an exchange rate that has been well above the 72c range for quite some time. I am not using that as an excuse, but we do know that that makes it a little bit more difficult for exporters and more attractive for importers. But that is the result of a strong economy and the view of the world about the Australian economy that has been created by this government’s economic management over the last 10 years.

In responding to this matter of public importance raised by the member for Griffith, talking about political instability, I ask everybody to look at the political instability that exists in the ranks of the alternative government of Australia, today and into the future—because it is going to keep on going; they are going to keep on recycling leaders, unless the member for Griffith can get his polling up a little bit higher. He may get a guernsey yet, but he has to get past the member for Lalor first. And that is what this is all about. That is the challenge for the member for Griffith. If I can have the last word on export performance: in 1996, $99 billion by the Australian Labor Party; in 2005, $177 billion by the coalition government.

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