Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

One of the more curious questions asked yesterday, which I think is embedded somewhere in the question asked just now by the Leader of the Opposition, was whether you use surpluses on consumption or whether you use them on investment. That is a very critical distinction because those opposite, in the avalanche of cash which came in the back door off the back of the resources boom, chose to do primarily one thing with it, and that was to expend it on consumption. Look at the avalanche of informed criticism of that strategy by those opposite. I take for example Saul Eslake’s criticism over the last several years that, of the hundreds of billions of dollars in extra revenue received over multiple years by those opposite—and I paraphrase Saul Eslake here—he could not identify a single thing on which this previous government could hang its hat by way of long-term productive investment. The alternative is in fact to use the proceeds of the mining boom to invest in the future. I will quote here from the International Monetary Fund’s report of July 2008:

Saving some of the revenue from the commodity price boom in three new funds will take pressure off monetary policy in the near term...

The reduction in public spending growth in the latest budget illustrates the government’s commitment to help reduce inflation.

We have a strategy for the future. It is saying: here you have a lot of revenue coming in off the back of the resources boom and you can either invest it or spend it on consumption, which is what those opposite did year in, year out while there was no new investment in our hospitals, no new investment in our TAFEs and our universities, no new investment for major new national and global challenges like climate change, and not a single dollar spent on reclaiming water entitlements from the Murray-Darling Basin—none of these investments in the future. I would suggest to those opposite that what they need is an economic strategy for Australia’s future rather than simply continuing their past practices, which were reflected budget after budget and which were to take the revenue product of the resources boom and to expend it on consumption. This government has a strategy for the long-term future. We are proud of our investment funds for the future. We are a party and a government of nation-building and we are so without apology.

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