Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I could never refer to the member for Banks, at his age, as elderly. I think he is quite a sprightly member and puts his case very forcefully. I really could not see myself as being regarded as elderly at this point in my life either, so I will have to differ from the member for Banks on that point.

Seeing that we are talking a little bit of history in the member’s contribution, members may remember the popular seventies series Six Million Dollar Man about an astronaut horrifically injured in a crash. The show’s catchphrase ‘We have the technology. We can rebuild him’ is still used today by many, and the astronaut was rebuilt and he was bigger and faster and stronger than ever he was prior to his crash. You can see the attraction of taking a broken human and not just fixing him up but also making him far, far better, and so we had this ‘six million dollar man’ who was able to solve all the problems of the world back in the seventies.

But if we fast-forward to the present, what do we have? We have a harsh economic climate but fighting for us in that climate we have the cut-price version. We have the Treasurer and the Prime Minister, the ‘nine hundred dollar men’ or some may refer to them as are the ‘three hundred billion dollar men’ or the ‘three hundred and fifteen billion dollar men’.

But one thing of concern is that we have to question whether they have the technology to run this economy. Of course, people who received more in refunds than they paid in tax would not refer to them as the ‘Nine Hundred Dollar Men’. They would probably refer to them as the ‘No-Hundred Dollar Men’—the No-Dollar Men at all—because the spin that was put out by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer was that, if you earned less than $100,000, you would get a $900 bonus. But I can tell the Treasurer and the Prime Minister that there are many people in my electorate who are disgruntled because the spin and the rhetoric were not matched by the reality. The spin and the rhetoric were replaced by a scheme that was not properly thought through and discriminated against many Australians.

But let us return to the Six Million Dollar Man being led out of disaster to a bright future and ask ourselves: what are the Nine Hundred Dollar Men doing? Rather than leading us from disaster, the situation is far more bleak. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are leading us towards disaster. We heard them last year. They used the catchcry, ‘We’re going to build a surplus.’ They talked about the surplus that they built. Very quickly, they have weaved their magic and turned a situation where they inherited a very substantial budget surplus into a deficit. Along came the Nine Hundred Dollar Men who took the $20 billion surplus and turned it into a $58 billion deficit. By contrast, during its time in government the coalition paid off $96 billion of Labor’s debt, but along came those Nine Hundred Dollar Men who turned a surplus into a deficit within 18 months and used their superhero powers to create $188 billion in net debt by 2012.

What would we think if we turned our household finances so quickly and so negatively? We would be very concerned, and the people of Australia are rightly concerned at the way the Nine Hundred Dollar Men are running our finances—$188 billion in net debt. That is $9,000 for every man, woman and child. It is not a good start to a newborn Australian today to be lobbed with $9,000 in debt from the first day of their life, thanks to Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan.

They blame everything. They blame the global financial crisis, they blame the shape of the tea leaves—you name it, nothing is ever their fault. The spin masters always make one thing clear: it is not their fault but always someone else’s fault. They always say, ‘There is no alternative’. There is no alternative, according to the Prime Minister. Either you agree with his policies on the economy or you are painted as being unpatriotic, economically illiterate and in favour of ruinously high unemployment. There is no debate to be had. It is perfectly clear that the Prime Minister believes he is correct on every occasion. But is he correct on every occasion? Is there another way to that proposed by this government? It is quite clear that in many cases where the government has put forward proposals there are other ways, and there are better ways. You have only to look at the bank guarantee that was put forward. The unlimited bank guarantee was painted as the only solution. What happened? We saw countless depositors, thousands of depositors, with their assets frozen.

There was also the fibre-to-the-node network. There was no other way to take this country forward other than fibre to the node, until suddenly the tender scheme collapsed in a heap. When it was found that the fibre-to-the-node system was not remotely commercially viable and the government could not find a tenderer to actually make this happen, then there was a new way. There was the fibre-to-the-premises option, but this option did not exist before the initial tender program fell down.

There was no other way on climate change, until the economic realities reared their ugly heads and the Prime Minister’s emissions trading scheme had to be delayed for a year. Previous to that point, there was no other way. If we did not start the ETS on time, it was going to mean the end of the world, the end of the Great Barrier Reef and doom for all concerned. But suddenly, when the political imperative changed, the Prime Minister’s view changed. Presumably, now the unions are protesting, there will be another way on issues of employee share schemes. There would have been no other way, but if the unions get into the act perhaps there will be a backdown there, too.

What about the issue of raising the retirement age to 67? It remains to be seen whether there will be another way. This government is hostage to headlines and hostage to spin. It is driven by hasty decisions which attempt to grab headlines and decisions that it takes in its own best interests and not in the interests of the country and not in the interests of good economic strategy. They decided that it was not in the interest of the government to use the word ‘billions’ so we had numerals but without the words ‘billions’ or ‘dollars’ attached. That is an interesting idea; an interesting product of the spinmeisters of the Prime Minister’s office. It is quite interesting that you can never have the words ‘deficit’, ‘dollars’ or ‘billions’ appearing in the same sentence—until, of course, the media start taking it up and then they apparently seem to change tack on that as well.

When this opposition raised the record debt being racked up by the $900 men, predictably the government and the Prime Minister talked of the opposition ‘talking the economy down’. In keeping with his mantra of ‘There is no other way,’ anyone who puts forward another point of view, anyone who dares to question the government’s economic profligacy, is doomed to criticism by this government. Yet the Treasurer has proved himself to be quite a gambler. He is gambling on high growth—on boom-time growth coming out of a recession that many commentators, including the IMF, are saying is going to be a long and protracted process. Despite that we have a Treasurer who has gambled on high growth. He is also gambling on maintaining government revenues under control at a level that is far lower—only two per cent growth in government revenues—than many of the elements of the budget would grow at, such as pensions and defence spending. Many of the major items in the budget will grow at far faster rates than the government’s limit of two per cent increase.

But let us look at the situation overseas—in the United States and the United Kingdom. The UK’s public sector debt stands at £697.5 billion or 47 per cent of GDP. However, the UK’s Office of National Statistics expects to have to add between £1 trillion and £1.5 trillion to the UK public sector net debt taking the total national debt to an unprecedented £2.2 trillion. This would be the worst debt outcome since the 1950s. Despite this massive debt we have unemployment in the UK in the December-February quarter increasing to 6.7 per cent—up 0.6 per cent over the quarter and 1.5 per cent on the year. The number of people employed fell by 126,000 and was down by 227,000 on last year. But the question remains: did this massive debt spark some form of economic revival? No, it did not. Did this massive debt result in job creation? No, it did not. Did this massive debt put the government and the nation in a stronger economic position? Clearly, it did not. Recently we had Standard and Poor’s saying it had revised its outlook for the UK to negative. The debt binge by the UK government has certainly not done that country proud. Standard and Poor’s said:

We have revised the outlook on the U.K. to negative due to our view that, even assuming additional fiscal tightening, the net general government debt burden could approach 100% of GDP and remain near that level in the medium term.

Debt does not equal prosperity and this government is taking us in this country down the path to excessive debt.

It is a similar situation in the United States, where you have massive levels of debt and deficit which are not resulting in economic wealth and well-being for the people of the United States. What are we going to do in this country? We are going to go down the same path. We are going to have massive increases in debt for which there is no credible path to repayment. The figures in the budget, which many economic commentators view with disbelief—the growth figures and the spending assumptions—are items of fiction.

Who will pay the price? It will be the Australian people who pay the price. If $96 billion of Labor government debt under the Hawke-Keating administration was a massive task to repay then $315 billion under the Treasurer and this Prime Minister will be a Herculean task and one falling very heavily on our children and grandchildren. Do they have a strategy to repay? No, they do not. Do they have a credible plan? No, they do not.

When you look at the individual elements of this budget and the way that they impact on regional electorates, there are some nasties to be found. The one that is causing very great angst in my electorate is the changes to youth allowance—a very nasty measure indeed. The eligibility for youth allowance is causing concern amongst so many young people. They are devastated by these changes. It is an outrage that young people will now be required to work 30 hours per week over 18 months in order to access independent youth allowance. Many of them have already started their gap year and were planning on starting their university studies in the new year. What is going to happen? They will have to put their studies on hold and work for longer. Some of them are unable to defer. In effect this is retrospective legislation from those students’ point of view. It is causing much heartache. I have had email after email from concerned young students and from concerned parents all worried about what the future will hold for them with the students needing the youth allowance to start their studies and to support the many expenses that students incur. It is absolutely outrageous.

I would now like to turn to the issue of infrastructure. Whilst I welcome the very welcome expenditure on the Kempsey bypass, in the electorate of Cowper we have a considerable number of major centres that also urgently need a bypass. Macksville, Coffs Harbour, Urunga, Woolgoolga—whilst the project has been announced we are waiting to see whether it actually gets going—and Ulmarra all need a bypass. It is vitally important given the heavy traffic on the Pacific Highway that the trucks are removed from the main streets of the centres.

Another important promise made by the Prime Minister was on health when he said that the buck stopped with him, but we have seen nothing in this budget that gives any meaningful support to that promise. I think that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer would prefer 30 June 2009 to pass unannounced without anyone noticing the fact that the Prime Minister swore an oath that the buck stopped with him on health. It is interesting that, as we approach that fateful date of 30 June 2009, we have the Mid North Coast Area Health Service actually cutting staff from the North Coast hospitals. We have hardworking staff that are somehow going to be able to ‘miraculously’, if you listen to the bureaucrats speak, deliver more procedures and more efficient services through fewer staff. I have not quite worked out how that is going to occur. If you strip 400 staff out of a health service, how can you do more procedures and produce more efficient services? We recently had a problem with infections at one of our local hospitals. What are the positions that are going to be cut? Many of them will be cleaners. How can you improve your infection control with fewer cleaners? It is an almost Orwellian concept. It is once again Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan putting spin ahead of substance. It is an absolute outrage.

I would also like to focus for a moment on private health insurance. I heard the member for Banks applauding this measure. But it is not so much an issue of the private health insurance rebate; this is an issue of the total health system and hospital waiting lists. If we force people out of private health insurance and force them onto the public system it will mean longer waiting times for the people that I represent. It will mean longer waiting times for pensioners and single parents. It will mean longer waiting times for those who can least afford to wait and those who can least afford to pay. The Prime Minister dresses this up in a ‘politics of envy’ type way and tries to masquerade it as bashing the rich—’Let’s slug the rich’—but it is really slugging the poor and the sick because they do not have the capacity to wait long periods of time, as is expected by this government.

Turning to the issue of broadband where we have this fibre-to-the-premises concept—we do not know how we are going to fund it; we do not have a business plan. There is not enough money in the budget to make—

See this speech in context