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

Today we are witnessing the logical outcome of the complete implosion of the Liberal Party that we saw in early December last year, with the replacement of the former leader, the member for Wentworth, by the member for Warringah as Leader of the Liberal Party. What we are seeing now is a direct return to John Howard by the self-confessed love child of John Howard, but unfortunately it is John Howard prior to his embracement of an emissions trading scheme. So it is John Howard in the original version of denial of the reality of climate change and seeking to put forward a smokescreen to pretend to the Australian people that he would do something about it were he elected to office. Like Louis XVI, the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. We are witnessing today a direct return to the pre-2007 John Howard of pretending to do something about climate change, and the policy that has been put forward by the Liberal Party today is simply a cobbled together con job.

What has been presented to the Australian people today is simply a list of feelgood spending programs with no clear link to reductions in emissions, no attempt to change behaviour, no strategy to do more if a stronger global agreement does emerge and, in particular, no source of funding. That, of course, in my role, is a matter of some interest to me. You might recall that the government, in the wake of the global financial crisis and the great damage that that crisis wreaked upon the budget, adopted a set of budget rules with respect to government spending. We are complying with those rules.

I would remind the House what those rules consist of: first, that, when growth returns to trend average, which is a fraction above three per cent, we will keep spending growth to two per cent real per annum until such time as the budget returns to surplus; and, second, that new spending proposals over that period will be offset by savings. Members may wish to look at the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook which was published towards the end of last year. We did actually put forward savings in those papers which more than offset the new spending that inevitably occurred in the period from the budget to the publication of MYEFO. Now, in an election year, we have an opposition that is again repeating its claim that, if it is elected to government, it will have a lower deficit and a lower debt figure than is currently projected under the Rudd government. If this means anything at all, it means that they have to abide, at the very least, by the same rule that the government has put in place: namely, when they put forward spending proposals, they have to offset them with savings—they have to demonstrate where that money is coming from. If they are to have any credibility whatsoever on fiscal management, if their claims to produce a lower deficit and lower debt are to have any credibility at all, then, when they come forward with major spending proposals, they have to offset them—they have to indicate how they are going to pay for them.

The state of play when the Leader of the Opposition took office only a couple of months ago was this: we had a number of unfunded big promises from the opposition hanging out there in the ether, like a commitment to reduce petrol excise by 5c per litre, a commitment to give capital gains tax rollover relief to small business and a commitment to reinstitute the Investing In Our Schools Program—all of which would cost, in total, billions of dollars, with not a single offset in savings initiative attached. On top of that we have the vandalism by the opposition in the Senate, knocking over government legislation designed to legislate savings in respective budgets. The most outrageous vandalism has been the defence of private health insurance subsidies for millionaires, which would cost the budget around $9 billion over the forthcoming 10 years, but there have been others. They are still blocking our attempt to reform the provision of Commonwealth dental services. They blocked the government’s attempt to reform the Medicare rebate for cataract surgery. There have been numerous instances of blocking government initiatives in the Senate, all of which have created or are creating costs to the budget.

So far, none of these things have changed under the new Leader of the Opposition. None of the previous big-spending, unfunded promises have been repudiated; none of the vandalism against the government’s budget in the Senate has changed. Instead, we have had further unfunded commitments. Only a week or so ago the Leader of the Opposition was out there pronouncing a new strategy to save the Murray-Darling, saying that he would employ large numbers of people to go out there and do various things—‘Yes, this could cost up to $750 million per year, but, hey, it’s a really important objective so what’s a bit of money between friends?’

Now, of course, we have exactly the same approach being taken with respect to climate change. The announcement today envisages that the cost of the opposition’s proposals over a period of four years would be a little more than $3.2 billion. That, I remind the House, is more than the overall, net cost over 10 years of the original emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the government put to this parliament. The net cost to the budget of that scheme when originally proposed to the parliament was about $2.5 billion. The proposal that the opposition has put forward today actually costs more than that in its first four years. The net cost of the government’s proposal over 10 years was $2.5 billion, and the bulk of that was up-front. Beyond 10 years it would have had no additional cost.

There is a notable, very interesting section in the document that was circulated by the Leader of the Opposition today which I think says it all about the credibility of the opposition with respect to both climate change and also fiscal management. I would like to quote the document:

Funding for these initiatives will be provided through normal budget processes as part of the coalition’s fiscal strategy. The coalition will release details of its overall fiscal strategy based on the budgetary updates to be provided by Treasury prior to the election.

To me, this sounds awfully like, ‘We’ll tell you after the election.’ There are a couple of key giveaway phrases in those sentences. The first one is ‘normal budget processes’. Who is in charge of normal budget processes? I think that would be governments, not oppositions. So, in other words: ‘We will provide for these things somehow’—unspecified under normal budget processes—that is, ‘after you’ve elected us to government.’ The other giveaway phrase is ‘overall fiscal strategy’. In the second sentence that I quoted it says that the coalition will release details of its ‘overall fiscal strategy,’ not the clear details line by line, item by item, specific spending cut by specific spending cut, but an ‘overall fiscal strategy’. That will probably end up being half-a-dozen dot points of motherhood statements about how they are committed to reining in waste and all of those usual stand-by phrases that ultimately mean very little.

In case honourable members do not think that we speak with credibility on this point, in opposition I as shadow finance minister announced, in an election year, about three billion dollars worth of specific opposition savings initiatives. That was in early March of 2007, only about a month further into the year than we are now. Some of those announcements were painful. Some of them attracted some flak and some controversy. But we wore that. Those commitments have been implemented, and of course we have subsequently implemented a much larger array of savings initiatives. So I would challenge the Leader of the Opposition to give an unequivocal commitment that, prior to the election, the funding that he has committed his party to today will be matched by specific savings. I challenge him to give an unequivocal commitment that prior to the election he will advise the Australian people of the detail of where that money is coming from.

It would be interesting to speculate about what the rest of his party thinks about what has been announced today. How, for example, do the members for Tangney and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate respond to the commitment of $3.2 billion of taxpayers’ money to do something that they think is a communist conspiracy, to do something that is directly at odds with their view about what is happening? A big proportion of the Liberal Party actually thinks that climate change is a giant fraud or a communist conspiracy, yet they are now standing here supporting the commitment of the Leader of the Opposition to spend $3.2 billion of taxpayers’ money on it. Of course, the opposition leader himself described in a meeting in Beaufort only late last year the whole concept of climate change as ‘crap’. Perhaps on the other side of the spectrum there is the member for Wentworth, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who has just spoken, the member for Sturt, the member for Flinders and the member for North Sydney—all leading figures in the Liberal Party—who supported an emissions trading scheme and who supported the ultimate compromise worked out between the government and the then opposition in their party room. What do they think about these proposals that have been announced today?

It would also be interesting to know what the member for Goldstein thinks about them, given that not so long ago he was, if I remember correctly, the shadow minister for emissions trading. I do not recall him being the shadow minister against emissions trading, but it seems that that is his current position. We do know, though, that there is one group on the opposition benches that is absolutely cheering, whooping and hollering about what has been announced today. They are of course our old mates, the National Party. When you look at the detail of what has been announced by the opposition leader today, out of that $3.2 billion commitment, $2.5 billion—the vast bulk of it—is committed to something that is called the emissions reduction fund. When you actually look at the document that has been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition and seek an explanation about what this is, all you can find is a very vague, general outline and claims, for example, that this fund would involve ‘less complexity, less bureaucracy’—that is a heading—and, ‘It will not require a lengthy and complex development process.’

That is all code for giant National party slush fund. That is all that means. This is Regional Partnerships on steroids. This is yet again a return to the big spending, phoney, pretend-you-are-doing-something-while-you-are-stuffing-money-down-the-throats-of-your-mates Howard government political strategy. That is at the very heart of the announcement of the Leader of the Opposition today. This is pure John Howard: pretend you are tackling a problem, pretend you are dealing with the issue, but in the meantime waste lots of taxpayers’ money and hand it over to your mates. The giveaway is in this emissions reduction fund.

The interesting thing that shows you what a fraud this all is is that in the emissions reduction fund section it says, ‘We are not going to be rewarding people or penalising people for doing things outside “business as usual.”‘ The message is clear: business as usual is okay. This misses the whole point. Business as usual is the problem. Business as usual is what is driving the increase in emissions both in this country and around the world. If we stick with business as usual, then we end up with all of the potentially extreme consequences of climate change both in this country and elsewhere. It is about changing business as usual that the whole exercise is dedicated to. This is the real giveaway. What a fraud, what a failure, this whole exercise is. It shows what a great con job it is.

The Leader of the Opposition today has demonstrated why he is a giant risk and why Australians should be very concerned about the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister. He is a risk to the economy, he is a risk to the budget and he is a risk to addressing climate change. On 19 March 2008, in a statement as the member for Warringah while pursuing an issue in his electorate, he said in this place:

We are all Australians. We all deserve a share of government largesse.

Just like his big-spending, phoney mentor, Mr Howard, the Leader of the Opposition does not change his spots. The policy he has announced today is a giant con job and the Australian people will reject it as the fraud it is.

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