Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills this evening I declare that this budget is based on a wing and a prayer. It is a budget designed to wreck Australia’s outstanding resources sector. The Rudd government is relying on a $9 billion tax on the resources sector to put the budget into the black, even if only by a whisker. It is a tax grab that risks sending half a million Australian jobs, foreign and local investment offshore. And it is a tax on the so-called working families.

Labor’s economic credentials are historically dubious. The facts speak for themselves. They are currently borrowing $700 million a week—or, in other words, $100 million a day—to cove their reckless spending. This is because of a $1 billion blow-out on fixing a quarter of a million dodgy roofs from the tragic pink batts fiasco and $1 billion to manage the illegal immigration influx. They are spending to fix policy failures and learners’ mistakes, all completely of their own doing.

Next financial year interest on net government debt will be $4.6 billion and by 2012-13 the government will be spending $6.5 billion a year on interest payments alone. In just three short years Labor have proven what this country has always known to be true about Labor governments: they are big taxing and big spending. They have spent and sent ordinary Australians into a $93 billion debt. It took a decade of tough decisions and sound economic management by the coalition government to pay off Labor’s $96 billion debt. Mr Rudd has put Australia back there again in record time. In other words, after 13 years of Labor there was a $96 billion debt and Mr Rudd has taken two years to send us into that same $90 billion figure.

This election is now a referendum on the mining industry.

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