Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

We see the true gravitas of the government on dealing with such weighty matters. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister made comments that the Australian Labor Party were all about ensuring that they were dealing with substantial economic concerns for Australia in a way that was consistent with the past performance of the coalition. Why would the Labor Party not try to emulate the previous coalition government? Let us be clear about the kind of economy that the Australian Labor Party inherited.

When the coalition were first elected in 1996 what we inherited, after 13 years of Labor government, was a $96 billion budget deficit. We inherited a $10 billion budget black hole and we had unemployment at record levels, coming off a peak of 11 per cent of Australians unemployed. That is what the coalition government inherited when we came into office in 1996. But after about 12 years of consistent, responsible, strong economic management the Howard government were able to pay off $96 billion of Labor Party debt, bring our unemployment rate from 11 per cent, where the Labor Party had it, down to a record low of four per cent—in fact, at one stage the coalition got unemployment down to 3.9 per cent—and ensure that we moved the budget from being a $10 billion black hole back into the black. That is what the coalition did with no assistance from the Australian Labor Party, who time after time after time stood in this House and in the Senate steadfastly and resolutely opposed to the very measures the coalition took that put this country back onto the strong economic footing that it had.

That is Labor’s record in opposition, and then they came to the election. The Prime Minister said, ‘You can trust me; it’s okay, I’m an economic conservative.’ We heard that from the Prime Minister in advertisement after advertisement paid for by the $100 million worth of campaign donations that the trade unions made to the Australian Labor Party. If there is one thing we know about the Labor government, it is that they are just puppets on a string. They are puppets controlled by this man, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, at the table, by the ACTU and the trade union mates. The unions are the puppeteers and they control the puppets at the front. That is what we know about the Labor government.

Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, made the comment that he would be an economic conservative. But what have we seen? The language of the buck stopping with him, the language of him being an economic conservative, has all radically changed in the past 12 months. Now, when Australia has faced international economic tumult, which is not the first time, we suddenly see the Australian Labor government say: ‘You know what? Everything’s up for grabs. We can’t control the fact that unemployment is anticipated to increase now. We can’t control the fact that the budget is likely to go back into deficit. We can’t control the fact that we as a government are going to start building up debt again.’ The Australian people should not be surprised, because Labor have form.

We do not have to hark back to 13 years ago when Labor were last in power; we can talk about what Labor do at a state level. They have been in power across this country in every state government for about a decade. What is their track record at a state level? This is the same party that controls the economic levers of this country today. I will tell you about Queensland. In that state there is nearly $90 billion of public debt, accumulated by that one state government alone. That is their track record. In New South Wales what is the situation? We know that the forecast for the New South Wales state budget next year is a $1 billion budget deficit. That is Labor’s track record at a state level. In fact, in every state where Labor are in power they have completely mismanaged and destroyed their state economies, so it is no wonder that, in the face of this international economic tumult, we will see the Australian government make the problem worse. We will see this problem continue to get worse and we know that the Prime Minister says—

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