Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The bills before us this afternoon, the Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009, are supply bills of $2.215 billion. Clearly the opposition will not stand in the way of supply bills. However it behoves me to make a few comments on the bills as they move forward. It must be understood that every dollar spent is borrowed money. In fact, the financial figures for the month of December showed that the Rudd government’s budget was already $14 billion in deficit. It took 11½ years for the previous government, the Howard government, to pay off Labor’s debt and to put the budget into surplus. And it took 12 months for the Rudd government to do what Labor governments always do—spend and throw the economy back into debt. It was the same with Whitlam, it was the same with Hawke, and it is the same with Rudd. It is what Labor governments do. And now we have $2.215 billion in two supply bills—every dollar borrowed; every single one.

The government has already announced that over the forward estimates its projected borrowings will be $200 billion. That is with funding and announcements that have already been put out there to the public—$200 billion without a single new announcement. With every new project, every response to the 163 commissions, inquiries, events and summits, if there is an outcome that costs a single dollar, that will be borrowed, and it will add to the $200 billion price tag.

If we look across the country at Labor’s largesse we see that the Queensland state government is $74 billion in debt, and commentators are suggesting that there is no way it can possibly be paid back. The state does not have the capacity to pay it back, considering its only two growth taxes are GST and payroll tax—as we know in economic terms, a growth tax to be. How can it pay it back? And we have the absolute and utterly disgraceful dysfunction of New South Wales Labor and their debt position well above $50 billion. Queensland and New South Wales, Labor states, and federal Labor have debts of almost one-third of $1 trillion over the next three years, and it all needs to be paid back.

If we look at the last 11½ years of economical miracle under the Howard-Costello government, we will start to get a glimpse of how difficult it will be to pay this money back and, because of the difficulty, how prudent governments should be before they start to splash cash around. In 1996, when the Howard-Costello government took the reins, the former finance minister, Minister Beazley, was saying, ‘The budget is in balance—in fact, in surplus.’ The result was that the Howard-Costello government found a budget over $10 million in deficit. So egregious was the budget position that an act of parliament was passed, the Charter of Budget Honesty Act, to ensure that no Labor government could again be so outrageous in its expenditure and so duplicitous in its statements that it could hide behind such a horrible financial mess.

From 1996 onwards, $96 billion of Labor debt was paid off. When that debt was paid off, $56 billion of interest had been paid. So, in real terms, that Labor debt was $152 billion. On top of that, the Howard-Costello government saved $60 billion in the Future Fund and had $27 billion in cash. During the Howard-Costello years, $152 billion, Labor’s debt and interest, was paid off; $60 billion was in the Future Fund; and $27 billion was in cash—that is, $239 billion; a quarter of $1 trillion.

How did this economic miracle that was to describe Australia as the ‘miracle economy of the world’ occur? Undoubtedly, there were some great boom times globally. Come 2001 we were able to enjoy the fruits of the mining boom because our industrial relations architecture was flexible, infrastructure had been put in place and we were seen as a reliable trading partner. We also sold 22 groups of assets. One group of assets, for example, was airports. Another group of assets was Telstra. From the sale of these 22 groups of assets, the Commonwealth retrieved $57½ billion—in fact, $45 billion from the sale of Telstra alone. There are no more assets to sell, unless of course Mr Rudd is looking at putting Aussie Post on the market. So, there is a mounting debt of $200 billion, plus the interest, and considering that government bonds are going out at 6.25 per cent—

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