Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question and congratulate her on her first speech last evening. The government inherited challenging economic circumstances: underlying inflation running at 3.6 per cent, five interest rate increases over the past 18 months—with another one well and truly in the pipeline—and government spending growing by 4½ per cent in real terms. In an economy already being supercharged by very high returns from the mining boom, allowing government spending to increase at that rate is simply and totally irresponsible. I would like to go through one example to illustrate this point—just one example. From the middle of 2006 until the election late last year, over a period of 16 months, the former Howard government spent $457 million on government advertising—almost half a billion dollars within a space of 16 months.

And it is interesting to look at the figures over the preceding five years or so. On a calendar year basis, government advertising spending increased from $95.6 million in 2002 to $368.8 million in 2007. That is a 285 per cent increase—and they did not even get to go the full year. They did not even get to go the full year and they still managed to spend nearly $370 million in that one year. If you divide the spending between campaign advertising and non-campaign advertising—non-campaign advertising is routine stuff mostly; job ads and the like—you will see that it increased from $60.4 million in 2002 to $281.2 million in 2007. That is a 365 per cent increase.

The House and the Australian people are entitled to ask: how did this happen and who was in charge? I note, as the Treasurer did earlier, that in the middle of last year the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins, was quoted in the biography of the former Prime Minister about his worries in relation to government spending running out of control, and I quote:

I do worry about the sustainability of all these things.

That was the then Treasurer in the middle of last year. Well, good on him! Isn’t that hunky-dory—he was there in his office worrying about it all! He was really worried about the sustainability of government spending. Thank goodness he was worried, because you can imagine what they would have spent if he had not been worried! The great pity is that he did not take any action; he did not actually do anything. That is the great pity. The truth is that, as on so many other things, the member for Higgins is all talk, all bluff, all bluster and no action. He is Australia’s champion flat-track bully, and we saw that in evidence last night.

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