Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Today the opposition raises a matter of the highest public importance—jobs, jobs, jobs. The jobs in question are not those of the members opposite; they are the jobs of those in struggling families. They are the jobs of people who were once part of working families. They have lost that job, and their families are now struggling. They are people who do not know when their next work opportunity is going to come. And how much worse is this going to be in the weeks, months and years ahead? Clearly, the government has no idea. Their incredible mismanagement of the economy has turned around a once booming economy—the star in the economic sceptre of the world. An economy admired across the globe has been turned around so that we are now in deficit, in debt and have little hope of an early recovery.

Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I am a proud Queenslander, but I am sorry to say that there are a group of Queenslanders who have been letting the side down lately. They are a gang of four: the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd; his Treasurer, Wayne Swan; the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh; and her Treasurer, Andrew Fraser. It seems they have conspired to drive Queensland into a recession and take the nation to record debt. They grew up in the state as I did, and we were always proud of a state that had a balanced budget. We were proud of the fact that the state’s public service had its superannuation fully funded when other governments did not. We were proud of our low taxes and strong growth. We were proud of what our state was achieving.

At a national level, too, there has been a contribution towards building a strong national economy. Queensland is one of the resource-rich states and has led much of the growth in our nation. It contributed very significantly to the $60 billion surplus that was available when Labor came to office in Canberra. Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, our fellow Queenslanders, have squandered it all. Only a couple of weeks ago they wanted a $200 billion limit on their credit card to go out and spend more and more. The emphasis of this government is on debt and spending. They have no idea about management and how to restore the nation’s economy.

The Queensland state deficit has exploded to $1.6 billion this year. It went from a surplus to a $1.6 billion deficit in the space of just a few weeks. How humiliating it should have been for the Treasurer to have to confess to the people of Queensland that he had blown the promised surplus in the budget and was now delivering a $1.6 billion debt. And the world noticed. Queensland’s AAA credit rating has been junked and the state now faces interest bills about $400 million per year higher because that AAA credit rating has been lost—the proud record of balanced budgets all now nothing. The world financial markets have looked at Queensland, its $70 billion debt and the incompetence of the management of the state government and come to the conclusion that this economy is not worth a AAA rating. In spite of all the coal, the gold, the mineral wealth, the agricultural wealth, the tourism industry—all the wonderful things that Queensland has to offer—it is not worth a AAA credit rating. I note that even Morris Iemma in New South Wales was not able to destroy his state’s credit rating. It might not be far away, but even he could not achieve what has been delivered by Premier Anna Bligh.

The state has a hospital system that vies with that of New South Wales for the title ‘worst in the Western world’. It has clogged road systems; a highly populated south-east area without services and facilities; overcrowded and unpainted classrooms; and political scandals, with recently retired ministers in front of the courts on corruption charges. This is the government that has taken Queensland out of the boom and into the gloom. Queensland boasted about the minerals boom and population growth but did nothing about providing the services that were necessary. As the Australian’s Mike Steketee said today, Labor’s state election campaign began yesterday with Ms Bligh saying that only she ‘has the experience and ability to steer Queensland through the tough times ahead’. He notes:

She forgot to mention that it was this ability that lost the state its AAA credit rating.

Of course, Labor has form in losing credit ratings. Remember that when Paul Keating was Prime Minister of Australia—the last Labor Prime Minister—our credit rating was slashed twice. Labor was incompetent and unable to manage the federal economy then; it is clear the current government is no better. How long will it be before Australia loses its AAA credit rating? How long can we keep filling up the Bankcard and keep our national credit rating at AAA? It is time the Treasurer levelled with the Australian people and made clear to us how long Australia can enjoy its high standing when it comes to borrowing around the world.

The Australian also said:

Voters will see through her—

Ms Bligh’s—

second excuse, too, and realise that Labor is rushing to an election before things get much worse. The party’s pollsters will have told Bligh that the angry mood of late last year, when Bligh copped a hammering in Newspoll, has dissipated with the help of falling interest rates and lower petrol prices. Once unemployment soars, it will be a different story.

She knows that when it soars in Queensland, as it is soaring in other parts of Australia, it will be a different story.

Here we have it: instead of a plan we have a panicked rush to an early state election; instead of sound economic management we have waste and lost opportunities; instead of honesty we have more and more spin. Queensland used to be the last state into recession. It now seems it will be amongst the first. We are likely to see Queensland not only in a recession but with no plan and no capacity to find its way through it. The state is lumbered with a huge debt, and that as well is going to lie on the backs of tomorrow’s workers as they pay higher taxes. Queensland will inevitably lose its reputation as a low-tax state as the workers pay more and more taxes to pay off the debt of the Bligh and Beattie governments. Of course, there will be less money in Queensland—as there will be less money in Australia—to pay for health, education, defence and vital services because the taxpayers of tomorrow, the families of tomorrow, will be paying higher taxes every year to pay for the spending sprees that are occurring at present—the spending sprees that buy a moment of sunshine and will have to be paid back in the future.

Our Prime Minister and our Treasurer inherited from the previous government an economy that was the envy of the world, an unemployment rate trying its best to get below four per cent and a budget surplus of $20 billion, which the Prime Minister has shamefully tried to claim as his own. The $20 billion surplus and the $60 billion of accumulated funds set aside for the future by the coalition have been turned into a projected $118 billion budget deficit by 2012. That is the fault of those who sit opposite. The unemployment rate is already up to 4.8 per cent and is likely to hit six per cent by Christmas.

What have we had? Two stimulus packages now. The first one, of about $10 billion, was going to create 70,000 jobs, but in question time today it was confirmed yet again that no-one opposite can identify a single job that this scheme has created. We now come to the $42 billion package, which is not going to create even a single job. The Treasurer and the government have not even claimed that it will create a single job. All it is going to do is sustain 90,000 jobs. Divide that number into $42 billion and it is pretty close to half a million dollars per job—a pretty expensive sustaining process.

The reality is that, instead of the packages actually creating and sustaining jobs, unemployment is going up. There are more people out of work. The stimulus packages are creating more unemployment, not more jobs. So far, Labor has promised to create 330,000 jobs through their various stimulus packages, but in fact unemployment has gone up by over 300,000. The unemployment figure has gone up by more than the number of jobs the government claims it is going to create. Contrast that with the two million jobs created by the previous government and you get a measure of the difference between good economic management and the rubbish that this Labor government is already pushing on the people. (Time expired)

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