Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I would refer the member to his own budget papers. You were so ambitious that you put it at most at 1.2 per cent. The second thing is that we will allow the automatic stabilisers to work—something those on the other side would never do. One of the reasons the Reserve Bank has been backed into a corner is that you would not do that. You spent and you spent and you spent and you spent. That is what occurred. So we are going to show some restraint.

Another thing we are going to do is encourage private savings. We have put an instalment in with our First Home Saver Account—something that could not be done in 11 long years by those opposite. The other thing we are going to do is tackle the chronic skills shortage. It is always going to be left up to the Labor Party, as the protectors of the Australian workforce, to make the investments in the future for the workforce of tomorrow. That has always been the historical task of the Australian Labor Party, and we come to it with relish yet again. The record of the conservative parties is always to run down these essential investments which are so important to wealth creation and which go to the core of a modern productivity agenda. They have been completely missing. So is it any wonder that productivity hit the floor in recent years with the failure of the coalition to invest in the drivers of growth? That is why we are sitting here now, looking at the highest elevated inflation in 16 years.

That brings me to infrastructure. We have talked about it a lot in the House in recent days, and those opposite will be hearing a lot more about it. The coalition wanted to play the blame game when it came to infrastructure. They wanted to sit back; it had nothing to do with the Commonwealth government. Huge national projects were left to the states—nothing to do with them. What has been the consequence of that? Infrastructure bottlenecks—bottlenecks holding back export performance, bottlenecks clogging up our cities. We are proud to say that we will partner with the states to solve these problems. There will be no more short-term fixes like those we had from the Liberal Party. The Labor Party is going to look after the long term.

The Rudd government has got its eye on the long term. All those others there have got their eyes on each other. They cannot even look at each other. The shadow Treasurer was up in the gallery last night, handing out his forms about Work Choices and all those alternative plans. He has been spied already. All around the Sydney business community, people are saying: ‘Malcolm is going to do Brendan in soon. Malcolm is going to do him in soon.’ That is what the Sydney business community is saying. They are out there doing it.

Lastly, we are going to put in place measures to enhance labour force participation and labour force supply. These are important measures and are linked to the measures that we will put in place for skills and education. They are intimately linked with the education revolution. The one thing those on the other side of the House never recognised was that average working people deserve some incentive in the tax system. When they work hard, they deserve reward for effort—and they are going to get it from this government. We are committed to easing the pressures on working families. We are committed to fundamental reform, not only in tax but also in federal-state relations, because we understand that it is the long term that is important— (Time expired)

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