Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Finance, Competition Policy and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Already Victoria has said—if we want to talk about Victoria—it expects about a quarter of the Building Australia Fund, and we know that Queensland thinks it is getting about $8 billion. Who knows what other grubby deals have already been done between New South Wales, Victoria, the Northern Territory, Queensland—wherever it might be. Labor Party grubby paws are all over this deal.

We are concerned we are left with a lot of unanswered questions about how the money will be spent: what rate of return will the government seek; will the government be seeking public-private partnerships; how will this be legislated; will the legislation, like the coalition’s legislation for the Future Fund, include a target rate of return for the investment? Not that that would be too important in the long term, of course, because Labor is intent on spending not just the return but also the capital—also the capital. Again, that is a point which distinguishes it from that which the coalition put forward in terms of the Future Fund, where we preserve the capital with some eye on the future. Labor has no credibility when you look at their track record at a state level in terms of infrastructure spending, and that is also a point that commentators need to take into consideration when Mr Rudd, in his proposals with this slush fund, will be paying for the work—in many cases the failed work—of state Labor governments.

The government has already shown that it is incapable of making the sound, sensible decisions that are required to successfully run this great country, so it is no surprise that it will seek help with these various infrastructure funds. They have held summits, they have held talk fests, they have set up endless reviews, they have sat around and watched petrol prices go up and up and up, so why should we expect the treatment of the $41 billion slush fund to be any different? In the spirit of its indecisiveness, this government will engage others to work out the projects on which all of this money, including the capital, will be spent. Presumably, the people who assess the projects will then put recommendations up for cabinet consideration, where it will then go behind closed doors for no-one to see. This is where the political interference certainly will come in. The veil of cabinet-in-confidence will come down over the projects and the Australian public will have no idea about the decision-making process and which projects get missed and why.

The government has been given the opportunity to assure Australians that the decision-making process will be open and transparent, but as yet there has been nothing. They have done nothing else while they have been in government, and this is no exception. Cabinet documents will not be released and the government cannot commit to not announcing projects during election campaigns. Thus I think we are seeing the birth of the biggest election war chest in Australian political history. Despite the Treasurer’s rhetoric about this budget not being political, despite the Treasurer’s rhetoric about it being for the future of Australia and despite the Treasurer telling us that the budget is a decade-long exercise in fiscal responsibility, the budget is political—it is about the next 12 months for Australia and the only thing in this equation is the future of the Labor Party over the next decade, at both a federal and a state level. The infrastructure funds are certainly nothing more than slush funds—slush funds for Labor and their mates. We cannot be sure and will never be sure that the infrastructure projects that Labor will undertake will not favour marginal seats, as the ultimate decision about these projects will be behind closed doors. Rex Connor would have loved this process.

Another area that first concerned me when I read about these infrastructure funds and the large amount of construction that the Prime Minister plans to undertake—probably personally, if he can find the time—is: how will Australia’s construction industry cope with the surge in investment? Where will Labor find the skills it needs to undertake this mammoth nation-building task? I was quickly reminded, however, that this budget will put 134,000 people out of work. One hundred and thirty-four thousand Australians will not be paying tax and will instead be on welfare. One hundred and thirty-four thousand Australians, through the deliberate policy measures of the Labor Party in this budget, will find it more difficult to cope with rising grocery prices, petrol prices and other cost of living pressures, including the higher interest rates that this inflationary budget will surely bring. After realising that 134,000 Australians will be looking for work, it became apparent where the manpower for the nation building will come from. No doubt soon we will see technical colleges springing up all over Australia to retrain those unfortunate 134,000 Australians. They are unfortunate because we have a Labor government who believes in higher unemployment, and they will be the first to suffer.

The budget for 2008-09 and these appropriation bills are not all that they seem. They are examples of Labor Party spin. It is trickery, and it is clever trickery. It is a typical Labor budget, high taxing and high spending. There is no doubt that Australians are feeling cheated by their government. They were promised cheaper petrol, but the government acknowledge that there is nothing more that they can do, in the Prime Minister’s own words. They were promised cheaper groceries, and again the government are doing nothing to help deliver cheaper groceries. The government promised an inflation-fighting budget, and again they have not delivered.

Consider the views of these experts. Goldman Sachs, in its budget review, said:

While the ALP has gone to great lengths to claim that this Budget will ease inflationary pressures, most of the supply enhancing initiatives involve large implementation lags. In reality, the ALP’s biggest contribution to inflation is that it is not making the inflation process worse.

This is from Chris Richardson, head of Access Economics’ macroeconomic group:

“The risk from this budget is that inflation could go up,” … “The risk is that the economy is travelling faster and that puts upwards pressure on wages, prices and interest rates. Chances are that interest rates this year are likely to go up rather than down.”

That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the inflation-fighting budget that we had to have.

In conclusion, it must be said that, while we are examining these bills and the expenditure measures that relate to them, we will be paying careful attention to the nature of the spending cuts and exactly whom they impact the most. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation can expect many questions in the coming months about why these cuts are appropriate and exactly how these cuts will put downward pressure on inflation. These bills provide a capacity to appropriate money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the proper running of the government, and the detail is provided in the bills. The issue contained within this debate and within the budget will not disappear quickly. We will continue to ask questions about how the slush fund money will be spent, and I look forward to that debate. (Time expired)

See this speech in context