Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

The Nation-building Funds Bill 2008 establishes three separate financial assets funds: the Building Australia Fund, the Education Investment Fund and the Health and Hospitals Fund. These funds were announced by the Rudd government earlier this year as part of its first budget. The Building Australia Fund will have initial capital of $12.6 billion. Seven and a half billion dollars has come from the Howard government’s 2007-08 surplus, and there are also the proceeds from the third tranche of Telstra, initiated by the Howard government and opposed by Labor, which come to $2.7 billion. The balance of the proposed $12.6 billion, which is $2.4 billion, comes out of the Communications Fund, set up and funded by the Howard government. So every dollar of the $12.6 billion in the Building Australia Fund has come from the previous government, even from decisions that were opposed all the way by the other mob, the Labor Party. How ironic it is! The education fund will have $8.7 billion in it on 1 January. Two and a half billion comes from the last coalition surplus and the remainder from the coalition Higher Education Endowment Fund. So every dollar of the $8.7 billion education fund is coming from the previous government. Of course, it all comes from hardworking taxpayers—it is all their money—but it is all money that has come from the previous government. The third fund is the health fund, and that will have $5 billion in it. Every dollar of that comes from the last coalition budget as well—the surplus out of 2007-08. So when the funds are set up on 1 January 2009—next year—every single dollar of the $26.3 billion in the funds will have come from the work of the previous government and the blood, sweat and tears of Australian taxpayers. Not one dollar has been delivered by the Rudd government.

I asked the Treasurer the question in question time today, and in his own little sneaky way he said, ‘Oh, no; we’ll be contributing the money on 1 January.’ It is not his money. It is not even the coalition’s money. It is taxpayers’ money, and it is the proceeds of the mining boom. It is the much maligned proceeds that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer suggest to the Australian people were squandered. If the money was squandered, what is this magic pudding that is going to appear on 1 January of $26.3 billion? If the money was squandered, as the Prime Minister and the Treasurer suggest, where did they get $26.3 billion for 1 January? Where? Labor have not delivered a surplus budget yet. They talk about a surplus budget. They say they have a surplus budget. They have not delivered a surplus budget yet.

It is interesting because the money that the government was going to contribute from 1 January next year until July next year was going to take the money in the funds to $41 billion. But that was based on a surplus this year. Currently, they are projecting a $5 billion surplus this year. Pigs might fly! I do not believe that Labor is capable of delivering a surplus budget. We will see. I might be totally wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope there is a budget surplus this year. I hope the government has the capacity left in the budget to be able to provide for those emergency measures which the global financial crisis will inevitably throw up over the next 12 to 18 months—the emergency measures that will need to be funded by Australian taxpayers to stimulate the economy, to, God forbid, rescue companies or to get industries back on their feet after they have fallen over. God forbid that that should have to happen, but everywhere else in the world that is happening. Yet the government seems to be spending every dollar it has even before it is desperately needed for some of the challenges that are coming like a train down the tunnel.

The building funds in total will have a shortfall of nearly $15 billion, and that is at the outset. Whatever money they have in them on 1 January next year will be money that was bequeathed by the previous coalition government. I want to get on the record where this money has come from, as it is very important. In 1996, when the coalition were elected and John Howard became Prime Minister and Paul Keating lost, there was $96 billion of Labor debt. The coalition faced the prospect of annual deficits of $10 billion. The coalition were facing paying $8 billion a year out of the budget just to pay the interest—not the principal—on that $96 billion of debt. The first thing we did was make sure that the government did not spend on an annual basis more money than it collected.

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