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

This was truly a budget where disbelief was suspended and black became white and the sun rose in the west. Let me tell you something about the sleight of hand in this performance on budget night. The Treasurer said, ‘I am fiscally responsible.’ The Prime Minister said, ‘I am an economic conservative.’ They magically turned a $20 billion surplus into a $32 billion deficit in only one year. What a great trick to start with. But they can do better. It is going to be $58 billion this year and $58 billion again the following year. They have, astonishingly, made $188 billion disappear into thin air by 2012-13.

But that is not the best trick of all. The money will suddenly reappear again! In six years time all that money will come back. It is going to take them a whole six years for the magic trick to occur, but to the naked eye this double act created an illusion to claim that all of this vanishing of money actually was not the magician’s fault at all; it was caused by factors overseas. But, when it comes to making the money reappear, that is the work of the illusionist. They are going to deliver all that themselves. But any keen-eyed observer would have been noting the tricks that this pair got up to with their smoke and mirrors and they would have noticed that the lovely assistant had been outside for the last week or two burning $50 notes—sprinkling money around the audience like confetti. And, of course, the audience was happy; they like having money sprinkled around on their chairs.

But the reality is that the budget is far different and we are going to have to live with it for decades. This is a budget that today’s schoolchildren will have to live with and pay for over their entire lifetimes. The interest payments on this debt will hang over them. Their opportunities to get a job will be reduced. They will be prevented from enjoying the benefits of needed investment in infrastructure, health, education, defence and the environment because they will be paying off the debt of our illusionists.

If we start paying off this year’s $58 billion budget deficit tonight at the rate of $1 every second, it will take over 1,500 years to complete the payment. After next year’s budget it will take 3,000 years. When they borrow the $300 billion that the Treasurer confirmed today he intends to borrow, it will take 10,000 years at the rate of a dollar a second to pay back. Billions are not empty numbers; they are serious amounts and they are a serious impost on future generations. The debt of $188 billion means a debt of $9,000 for every man, woman and child. When it gets to $300 billion it is close to double that amount. Every Australian is stuck with an interest bill of at least $500 a year—a $900 interest bill for every worker. These workers got one cheque for $900 and now they will get an interest bill every year for $900 until this money is paid back. This is real money. This is a serious impost on future generations. This is this government bequeathing to the children and grandchildren of Australians a debt that they will burdened and lumbered with for a very long period of time.

Let us turn to the second part of the illusionary trick—the repayment of all of this money. Treasury has already adjusted its economic forecast three times in the past six months, but if their latest forecast is correct it will take six years for the Labor government to turn around an annual deficit of $58 billion and start delivering a surplus. It will be many years after that before the debt is repaid. But the illusionists on the other side say that to achieve this we are going to have a growth rate of 4½ per cent within two years and that growth will continue at that pace for at least six years in a row.

Let’s shed some light on the Treasurer’s dark arts. Australia’s economy has grown at 4½ per cent per year on only five occasions over the last 30 years. Through the mining boom and the good management of the previous government, we have only managed five occasions in the last 30 years when growth has exceeded 4½ per cent. But Labor are going to do it six years in a row! They are consistently going to achieve levels way above trend. No-one could believe that forecast. The whole budget is built on unreliable, rubbery figures. Inflation would inevitably be out of control if you had that level of growth. Interest rates would be crippling. The very people whom the government would be relying on to drag us out of the recession—like business and exporters, those who actually make the wealth of the country—would not be able to afford the interest rates because the government would be out there competing with them to fund its huge debts. Of course, if we end up with an emissions trading scheme, that of itself will be enough to add the second million to the unemployment queue and to guarantee we have a new bout of recession. Yet Labor believe that through all this—their thousands of pages of unbelievable predictions—they have some kind of a plan to get us out of this mess. It is clearly bald spin that anyone could suggest this is a budget for recovery. This is a budget for debt. This is a budget for putting burdens on Australians for a very long period.

I was proud to be part of the government that paid back Labor’s last lot of debt, the $96 billion debt that the Keating and Hawke governments left Australia. The Rudd government are going to deliver that much debt in just two years. In just one term this Labor government will deliver more debt than their predecessors did in 13 years. The great illusionists want us to believe that, while they have been spending at a hypersonic velocity of $225 million a day, they are now going to go cold turkey for six years, that there will be no more expenditure on new programs, including no more expenditure on drought.

I will respond to the comments of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. He said, quite correctly, that there is not normally provision in budgets for drought announcements that have not been made. But this budget went a lot further. It actually says in the budget that drought payments will cease, that there will be no more made after 2009-10. The words are in the budget: the drought program will cease. If it is not going to cease—and I heard the minister say on radio today that there will be future drought assistance—that means that the Treasurer’s promise that there will be no more spending programs has already been broken. In other words, the commitment that there will be no more spending and all the money will go to paying back the debt has already been broken and the government’s rhetoric has been completely empty.

When the Labor Party needs to make cuts it is the usual victims who get hit—the self-funded retirees, people with private health care, business, exporters and, of course, those who live outside the capital cities. They copped a $1 billion hit in last year’s budget—and that was in good times—and they have copped it again in this budget. There is no new regional partnerships program, even though Labor promised there would be one. The government have axed the area consultative committees across the nation, even though Minister Albanese promised, only a couple of months ago, to their face, that their jobs were safe and the network would be continued. Of course, the minister for agriculture’s own department took the brunt of the cuts. It was singled out for a special hatchet job. Yet the minister seems to sit there self-satisfied about what has happened: 312 staff to go, the abolition of Land and Water Australia and $12 million to be taken from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

In this budget, the Labor government have announced $460 million in new programs to help farmers in other parts of the world. They are spending $460 million in new programs to help farmers in other parts of the world while they rip $900 million out of the assistance for Australian farmers. What are the priorities of this government? A seat at the UN is a higher priority for this government than a bed in a public hospital. This government would prefer to have a road in the Caribbean than to have one in country Australia. Their priorities are all about seats in the United Nations and the future of the Prime Minister. They could not care less about the debt being inflicted on people around this country.

What about the changes that have been made to Youth Allowance, which will mean that hundreds of country children have had their dream of a university education shattered. They have no capacity to find the money somewhere else. The children of drought stricken farmers and others will not be able to get youth allowance, and the injustice that is already there in relation to country education will be further expanded.

We should probably have expected this. Obviously, the member for Dawson knew what to expect from this budget, because he said in the Townsville Bulletin today: ‘Quite frankly, we were lucky to get anything.’ The member, who represents a regional part of Queensland, has pretty quickly recognised what the role of a regional member is within the Labor Party government—that is, you are pretty lucky if you get anything. That is the approach that Labor takes to people who live outside the capital cities.

Finally, I turn to some of the issues in my own shadow portfolio of transport. The other great spin associated with this budget is the claim by the government that somehow or other this is going to be a great nation-building budget, with record expenditure on road and rail. It may surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, that the government’s allocations in this budget for road and rail are actually less than the coalition had committed over the same period. There is no great spending on road and rail in this budget; it is a reduction on what had been promised by the previous government. It is a classic example of the way in which Labor use spin and illusion to pretend they are delivering programs when in fact they are not.

Of course we have sections of roads that need to be upgraded. We had committed to AusLink 2; the new government has committed to AusLink 2. This supposed grand expenditure that was going to come from the Building Australia Fund has turned out to be another disappearing trick. The Prime Minister spoke about $70 billion worth of projects. ‘Just wish and we will deliver,’ the people of Australia were told, and $800 billion worth of wishes came in. How much does the government have to spend? Only $8.4 billion. Only one in 100 of all of the wishes has been honoured, and, in reality, even with that money the government still has not approached what the coalition had committed to spend on roads and rail.

Nearly all of this money is going to urban public transport projects, including a number that seem to be a bit of a surprise to people around Australia, such as the funding for the O-Bahn busway extension in Adelaide. That came as a great surprise to the South Australian Minister for Transport, because he had not even asked for it. We are led to believe that there was some kind of detailed, careful scrutiny for all the projects, but South Australia receives a project it had not even asked for. A lot of these other projects are also smoke and mirrors. We are told there is $91 million for a Sydney west metro rail proposal. How far is $91 million going to go towards a project that will cost up to $10 billion? Or the $20 million for the $14 billion tunnel projects in Brisbane? Or the money for the Gold Coast light rail, which is dependent upon massive private sector investment? This is all about illusions. This is a budget that has not delivered on its commitments, just debt to future Australian generations. (Time expired)

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