Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and associated bills before the House. From the outset, especially for those opposite, I wish to congratulate the Treasurer for his first budget. As a proud Queenslander I am particularly proud of what he has delivered for Australia and for Queensland. It is a budget that will deliver economic security for our families and for all Australians in these uncertain economic times. We are facing a lot of pressures from around the world and domestically. One of the best ways we can support working Australians struggling to cope with rising costs is to put downward pressure on interest rates. With a forecast surplus of $21.7 billion—that is, 1.8 per cent of the GDP; I repeat that: 1.8 per cent of the GDP—this budget forms a strong defence against the curve balls that may come our way from the global economy and other outside pressures.

I also welcome the budget initiatives that stimulate productivity, overcome infrastructure bottlenecks and drive world-class education and training. I will just unpack some of those—starting with productivity. When Treasurer Wayne Swan was handed a budget, when he was handed the reins to the economy, productivity was at zero. Surely that is one of the best indicia as to the state of the economy. Unfortunately, former Treasurer Costello handed over productivity rates of zero. Infrastructure bottlenecks were something that we heard much about in the preceding years, as part of the blame game played by the former government. They would take photographs of ships and say, ‘This is the fault of the state governments,’ without doing anything constructive. It is yet again an example of the blame game being played by the former federal government.

Obviously, we have heard on numerous occasions about how the former government neglected education and training—shameful results in terms of university funding. Every other OECD country had increases and if you compare them to Australia we actually went backwards—a shameful approach. No plan for the future. Those three things—productivity, infrastructure bottlenecks and the neglect of education and training—should be hung around the neck of the former government like a dead albatross, so that they are held accountable for that, the so-called economic managers who did absolutely nothing in terms of having a vision for the future. Instead, they just took the benefits of the Hawke-Keating economic reforms that can be listed off. If we do make a list of all of the current member for Higgins’s economic reforms, it will not take very long at all, because there were none—apart from the GST. In terms of major economic reforms, there are none. As I said, that neglect should be hung around their neck like an albatross, as in Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

Treasurer Swan’s budget delivers the $55 billion Working Families Support Package, delivering tax cuts directed to low- and middle-income families and support for childcare and education costs. These tax cuts and other incentives provide some relief to those Australians who need it most. We know that the price of petrol has gone up significantly. It has gone up over 400 per cent since the Iraq war started. We know that the drought has had long-term impacts on groceries. We also know that rents and mortgages are significant pressures as well, especially in places like Brisbane and in the growing cities. The Swan budget makes a real investment in Australia’s future rather than just in the next election—not handouts based on a political whim. There is no regional rorts in this budget; it is measured and delivers for Australian families and seniors. It provides measured and targeted investments in our future to address infrastructure, skills and climate change. They might be three terms that those opposite have not heard before: infrastructure, skills and climate change.

Among the dubious economic claims of those opposite is that the Howard-Costello government successfully cancelled government debt, but obviously this is only half the story. They might have paid off government debt, but what they do not tell us is that they increasingly shifted debt back onto Australian families and squandered their good fortune by failing to invest in infrastructure for the future. As I said, the Hawke-Keating government made tough decisions that impacted on battlers where they were able to get the union movement to make significant reforms by investing in superannuation and forgoing wage rises for the good of the economy.

That was the way of the Hawke-Keating government. As I said, if we look at the reforms of the Howard-Costello government, we see that they did nothing in terms of infrastructure and significant economic reform. This shameful underspend by the previous federal government has forced state governments to take on more debt to deliver vital infrastructure. This is not reckless economic management but a sound investment in productivity by our state governments. No more blame game; this is actually about working together to deliver something for the benefit of all Australia. We simply cannot afford to have workers trapped in traffic gridlocks or goods stranded at rail and port bottlenecks. Coming from Queensland, and having worked in the mining  industry, I have seen—

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