Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I know that some of my colleagues are questioning my choice of leisure activities, but I could not resist—the temptation overcame me. The interesting thing is that I pointed out yesterday that there is no mention of the global recession in this leaflet that is a statement of the Liberal Party economic position, and after having a look at it again today I discovered that there is also not a single reference to productivity, no reference whatsoever to the long-term holy grail of economic reform in the Australian economy and not a single reference to what is the greatest challenge for the Australian economy: improving productivity. The pattern is the same: born-to-rule complacency that characterised their nearly 12 years in office that is now manifested by endless point scoring, opportunistic sniping and talking the Australian economy down as a substitute for genuine economic policy. In particular it is manifested by relentless attacks and opposition to the key reforms and key investments the government is putting in place to boost productivity in the Australian economy in the long term. Attacking the broadband network proposal, opposing investment in infrastructure, sniping at the school investments—all of these things are characteristic of the opportunism of the Liberal Party.

I note this morning that, in addition to not putting up any savings measures themselves, as well as opposing the government’s savings measures, the opposition regard past inefficiencies in government as totally trivial matters. There was the Sea Sprite fiasco that occurred on their watch, where $1.4 billion of federal government money went west. I note that the Leader of the Opposition, in an interview on AM this morning—and I have the transcript with me—said that this fiasco, this $1.4 billion, was ‘a distraction’ and ‘a complete diversion’. That was his summary of one of the most embarrassing cases of government waste in the history of the Commonwealth that occurred while he and his government were in office.

Even in areas where the opposition claim to support the government, they do not know what is going on. Two initiatives in the opposition leader’s budget reply speech were that he would have a one-stop portal for filings by business and that he would have a standardised procurement contract for people purchasing from the government. There is one slight problem with these two initiatives: both of them are already occurring. They were so slipshod and complacent that they did not even know that these initiatives are already underway under the Rudd government’s reform agenda.

It is understandable that everybody in economic debate is focused on the global financial crisis and the short-term threat that is posed to the Australian economy by the global recession. We have a big challenge facing us in this country, because once we get through that short-term challenge there is the longer term challenge of productivity. The world will be more competitive, it will be more challenging for Australia, and we have had a lost decade—

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