Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

We know that before the election the Prime Minister talked big. Last year he took out expensive television advertisements to tell the Australian people that he was an economic conservative. He was trying to convince the public that he could manage the economy as responsibly as the coalition did. In fact, he draped himself in the language of the coalition to reassure the Australian public that Labor would not go back to the bad old days of Labor debt and Labor deficits. The closer we got to the election the more strident the Prime Minister became about claiming to be an economic conservative. He said that to be an economic conservative you believed in budget surpluses. Time and time again he said that. On 23 November, in an interview on AM, he said:

Economic conservative means a fundamental belief in budget surpluses …

Then he tried to claim credit for the Goss government’s surpluses. He said:

… go back to my experience …

This is the Prime Minister. He said:

… go back to my experience in this respect. I worked at a senior level in the Goss government in Queensland in the first half of the 90s.

When national economic circumstances were difficult, when there wasn’t a lot of money flowing into the economy particularly, there wasn’t the presence of a global resources boom, and budget after budget, we produced budget surpluses.

So the Prime Minister, who back then was a bureaucrat in the Queensland government, is now claiming that he delivered budget surpluses, and he said that is what it means to be an economic conservative. In question time today we asked when the Prime Minister, not as a bureaucrat in Queensland but as the Prime Minister of the Rudd government, would deliver the first budget surplus. He was unable or unwilling to answer that question. He will not tell the Australian people when the Rudd government, this government of economic conservatives, will deliver what it says is a fundamental cornerstone of economic conservatism—that is, budget surpluses.

The Prime Minister has said that there will be a temporary deficit. When asked what a temporary deficit is he again refused to answer. He ducked and weaved and avoided the question because he knows that the last time Labor were in government federally and they announced a temporary deficit it lasted for six long years—driving the country into debt to the tune of $96 billion. Over six years, from 1991 to 1996, they blew out the debt from $16 billion to $96 billion. That was in just six short years. So we know that when the government talks about a temporary deficit it means for years and years. In 1990 the last Labor government had a deficit of $438 million. By 1996 it had a budget deficit of $11 billion.

It took a coalition government only two years to re-establish a budget surplus, but it took us 10 years to pay off Labor’s $96 billion debt. The Prime Minister went on and on about his economic conservative credentials. He said he prided himself on being an economic conservative and that meant he was committed to budget surpluses. He said, ‘That’s why I’m an economic conservative: to ensure that we have budget surpluses.’ He said, ‘I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. I intend to stick to it. I believe as an economic conservative in budget surpluses.’ What we have seen today is a government prepared to throw the economic conservative facade away—and thank goodness because this was never a Prime Minister who was an economic conservative. He has never been an economic conservative and now the facade has been dropped.

What the Prime Minister has been doing over the last couple of days since he jetted in from Lima—since he stopped in Australia for long enough to take off his poncho—is talk down the Australian economy. The OECD and, indeed, the Reserve Bank have said that confidence is all-important. The OECD warned the government that, unless it restored confidence, its stimulatory package would have limited effect. The Reserve Bank warned the government to restore confidence, yet all we have heard from the government is talking the economy down. They do not focus on the strengths. They do not focus on the forecast of two per cent. They do not focus on the positive terms of trade. They do not focus on monetary policy at 5¼ per cent. They do not focus on unemployment at 4.3 per cent—steady at historically low levels. And how was the Prime Minister today suggesting that the coalition did not care about jobs? It was the coalition government that brought unemployment from eight per cent to just over four per cent. We created two million jobs while in government and the last time Labor were in government unemployment rose to 11 per cent—one million Australians were unemployed under Labor. What we are seeing today is a return to old-style Labor: high unemployment, budget deficits and debt. It is in their DNA—debt and deficit equals Labor governments. The government should focus on talking about the strengths of the Australian economy—giving people confidence in this nation. (Time expired)

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