Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Okay—‘a bit of banter’. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is a very good ruling! Minister, are you cynically giving the nod to the funnelling of taxpayers’ millions into your own electorate with an eye to your own electoral skin? Furthermore, following the budget the finance minister said ‘the coalition’s debt and deficit campaign is dead’. Minister, can you please justify this statement considering that the budget deficit—not that we heard much about it on the night of the budget—is $57 billion for 2009-10 and, if all of the rosy assumptions come to be, is forecast to be $40.8 billion in 2010-11? The point of my question is that $57 billion is the largest deficit in our history by a country mile and $40 billion, if it comes to pass, will be the second-biggest deficit in our country’s history. I would like the minister to explain how he can say that the debate about debt and deficit is dead when the government, with a budget approved by the minister, will have to borrow $700 million a week for the next two years to pay for the continued spending. As well, can the minister confirm that the interest on net government debt in 2010-11 will be $4.6 billion and that net government debt is forecast to peak at $93.7 billion in 2011-12? Can the minister confirm that the forecasted interest repayment on this amount is $6.5 billion? I also refer to the $10 billion super hit for small business. I refer to the proposal to lift the compulsory employer superannuation contribution from nine per cent to 12, which will cost small business $10 billion a year. Three months ago, when asked by Ross Greenwood whether future compulsory superannuation increases would come at the expense of wage increases, the minister clearly said:

… the fact that your employer is forced to put in an extra three per cent in your super means that money that otherwise could have gone into your wages, is going into your super basically.

When, subsequent to that announcement, the minister’s own words were read back to him in a radio interview on 4BC, the minister said he had been seriously misrepresented, but he finally conceded:

Yes, it will have an impact on the dollar increase for some workers.

On multiple occasions the minister has conceded that the compulsory increases in employer superannuation will come at the expense of wage increases. Why then, when pressed in different forums, has the minister claimed not to have said this? (Time expired)

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