Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In some respects I feel for the Leader of the Opposition when he comes to putting this motion before the House. I feel for the Leader of the Opposition because he not only has to make this debate in direct contrast to 13 years of poor form when he was a member of Hawke and Keating governments but he also has to move this motion today in light of his stumbles on the weekend when the Leader of the Opposition did not even know who the Governor of the Reserve Bank was.

The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition comes in as the leader of the Australian Labor Party, a party that saddled this country with $96 billion of debt, a party that drove up interest rates to 17 per cent, a party that delivered a miserly 1.3 per cent increase in real wages over 13 years and a party that drove one million hardworking Australians onto the scrap heap of unemployment. It is those figures that hang around the neck of the Leader of the Opposition, and it is that track record that hangs around the neck of the Australian Labor Party.

Let us get back to basics: let us focus on the difference between the government’s performance and the opposition’s performance. When you look at those key indicators that I know the men and women of Australia on the street look at—unemployment, wages growth, the price of housing, their level of wealth, whether their children can get a job—people are better off under this government than they have ever been under the Australian Labor Party.

The Leader of the Opposition can come in here with all of his hot air, but it will not change the fact that he has a track record of failure that is only matched by the Labor Party’s track record of failure. If you want proof positive of the fact that the problem is bigger than the man—although that might sometimes seem hard to believe—look at what it is that is putting upward pressure on interest rates today. And do not take my word for it. I encourage you to look at the comments that the Governor of the Reserve Bank made. The Governor of the Reserve Bank has made it very clear that one of the principal drivers of upward pressure on interest rates today is the performance of the Australian Labor Party in every state and territory government, a performance that I would encourage the House to turn its mind to.

Collectively, the states are forecasting fiscal deficits of almost $5 billion in 2006-07 compared with a surplus position of $1.2 billion in 2005-06 and of $4 billion in 2004-05. We are moving from a position where state governments have a $4 billion surplus to the Labor Party running them all into the red to the tune of almost $5 billion. But it gets worse: the Australian Labor Party is doing an even worse job than what I am talking about. The forecast is that, from 2006-07 to 2008-09, state Labor governments will be budgeting for borrowings at around $43 billion. This is $43 billion of Australian Labor Party debt thanks to the state governments. All I can say is: thank goodness the Australian Labor Party does not control the federal financial benches. If the Australian Labor Party were here, instead of repaying $96 billion of government debt—which the coalition government has done, thanks to the Treasurer, Peter Costello, and the Prime Minister, John Howard—Kim Beazley and, before him, Mark Latham and, before him, Simon Crean would have driven the budget deficit of this country even higher than it is today.

See this speech in context