Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The inflation data that was released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics recognises in part that Australian families are burdened with everyday cost-of-living increases that are not being properly recognised by this government. Over the past year electricity prices have risen by 12.4 per cent, water and sewerage by 12.8 per cent, gas by nearly 10 per cent, child care by 7.2 per cent, hospital and medical services by nearly seven per cent, postal services by 6.5 per cent, property rates and charges by over six per cent and education by nearly six per cent. They are hefty increases for everyday Australians, who have to meet the sorts of costs that are not properly recognised in the CPI, as the Reserve Bank has stated previously.

Since Labor was elected in the December quarter of 2007, water and sewerage prices in Australia have increased by 46 per cent. Electricity prices since Labor was elected have increased by 42 per cent. Gas has increased by 29 per cent, hospital and medical services have increased by 20 per cent, postal costs are up by 16 per cent, property charges are up by 19 per cent and education costs have risen by 17 per cent. All of that is since Labor was elected in December 2007, when Kevin Rudd, the member for Griffith, said the cost of living was a No. 1 issue for Australians.

Mr Deputy Speaker, what have you got to do about it? I will tell you what you have got to do about it: you have got to make hard decisions. The coalition has never been afraid to make hard decisions, and we have been challenged over recent days by a sanctimonious Prime Minister giving us another lecture about Hansonism. I was in this House when Pauline Hanson gave her maiden speech. My colleagues were here when Hansonism was alive and well, and to have a sanctimonious Prime Minister who was not in the building give us a lecture about Hansonism is just absurd. I will tell you what happened with the now Prime Minister. The now Prime Minister was handing out guides to her mates in the MUA on how to fight waterfront reform. This is a Prime Minister that gives us a lecture about economic reform, yet at that very time she was chief solicitor for Slater and Gordon, running around giving people on the waterfront all the help they could get to resist the sort of reform that was so necessary.

I tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker: we are the party of reform. We are the party of economic reform. To have the Treasurer come into this place and claim that the Labor Party is part of the grand consensus on economic reform is a joke. When I was on that side of the House and Tony Abbott, the now Leader of the Opposition, was on that side of the House and so many of my colleagues were on that side of the House and we were putting in place the hard yards of economic reform, Labor at every single stage—every stage—fought against it and opposed it. It started with the privatisation of the last tranche of the Commonwealth Bank. Labor opposed the privatisation of Telstra. Even regarding giving the Reserve Bank independence in relation to monetary policy, by putting in place a letter of intent about the inflationary band from two to three per cent, Labor from opposition wanted to take Peter Costello to the High Court. And now they are the custodians of the independence of the Reserve Bank.

The Labor Party opposed our fiscal consolidation. After they left a $10 billion black hole they opposed us every step of the way in trying to fill that black hole to get the budget back into surplus. Labor opposed us in our attempts to pay off $96 billion of debt, to make all the hard yards, and Labor then went on to oppose us in industrial relations reform. They opposed us on tax reform and of course in 1998, after the tax election, the now Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister voted against tax reform. The previous Prime Minister described it as ‘fundamental injustice day’—1 July 2000. And let us talk about what they describe further as a ‘consensus on economic policy’, because they made my life difficult trying to get the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program through, which in fact helped to inoculate us against the recent global financial crisis. It was the Labor Party which went on to make life so difficult in relation to the establishment of the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission that they now laud, the then Leader of the Opposition, Simon Crean, in fact tried to oppose. In fact, he was not the Leader of the Opposition; he was shadow Treasurer. But I would say this: the Labor Party at every step of the way have sought to oppose economic reform when it has been so necessary when they have been in opposition. Now they accuse us of opposing economic reform.

Let me say something about banking. I am not backing down one step from everything that I have said and I have delivered on behalf of the coalition in relation to banking in the last few days. We have a plan to actually help Australian families and small businesses get greater competition out of their banks. It is amazing that, in answer to his own party’s question today, the Treasurer said that there was nothing of substance in our nine-point plan and then in the very next answer, in response to my question about giving the ACCC greater power to take on price signalling, the Treasury said there are a number of good initiatives in the nine-point plan. And there were issues of substance.

But this is the hypocrisy of the Labor Party. What they have to understand is, whether you like it or not, there has been change in the banking system over the last two years. Whether you like it or not, globally and particularly in Australia there has been a reduction in competition. There have been changes in the nature of wholesale funding. Whether you like it or not, in Australia the mortgage originators cannot access a liquid and competitive market. Whether you like it or not, St George is no longer an independent bank. BankWest no longer exists. Wizard Home Loans, RAMS Home Loans, Aussie Home Loans are no longer independent. Whether you like it or not, Societe Generale has left Australia. The Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup and a range of other international banks have reduced their activities in Australia. Whether you like it or not, the banking landscape has changed, and the four major banks now have more power and more influence in the market than at any other time. Either we are going to be ahead of this issue or we are going to be in catchup at what could be the most dangerous time in the financial services cycle.

We still face significant global uncertainty. The Treasurer is right: Basel III does put in place greater capital liquidity requirements for our banks. There are going to be challenges for our financial services system in the way that it funds its Australian operations into the future. It is the case, as we universally celebrate, that there is not the same exaggerated growth in credit today or perhaps over the next few months as there was prior to the global financial crisis. So now is the time to do the hard yards of reform. It is this side of the parliament that has mustered the courage that the Labor government does not have and has laid down a platform for reform of financial services that inoculates us against the next financial crisis. If you truly believe the words of the Treasurer that the reforms of today guarantee the prosperity of tomorrow—words that, on so many occasions in this place, he has stolen, without credit, from John Howard—then I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, now is the time to undertake that reform. That reform properly considered and properly consulted will deliver a stronger, more robust and significantly more competitive financial services system. You can do that by doing the hard yards and undertaking the challenges. When I talk about engaging in a ‘son of Wallace’ or a ‘grand-daughter of Campbell’, I am saying that we do not want to go down another path similar to the one that Labor went down in the last term of parliament whereby they commissioned reports and then did nothing about them.

Let us talk about reform. Ken Henry made 138 recommendations. The Labor Party have now accepted 1½ of them. They had accepted 2½ reforms but they dumped one—the original form of the mining tax. Now we know that the mining tax itself is no longer guaranteed in this term of parliament. If you want to talk about reform, it is the Labor Party that is doing nothing at all about the labour force capacity of Australia. We did the hard yards: Welfare to Work—the Labor Party opposed us on that; mutual obligation—they opposed us on that; and remember Work for the Dole—the Labor Party opposed us on that. They have not lifted a finger on labour force participation rates. We went to the last election with three detailed policies—getting people under the age of 30 off welfare and getting them into work; helping mums, particularly those who had children, to get back into the workforce; and helping people over the age of 50 to get off welfare and get a job. We had considered, funded policies that helped to increase the participation rate of Australians, without pulling the lazy lever of a massive increase in immigration. The Labor Party did not have one participation policy. They talk about building capacity but—do you know what?—their definition of capacity is to waste $43 billion on fibre optic cable that is going to take years to roll out and will not deliver what they are promising. Their idea of building capacity is to roll out pink batts and school halls at a cost of billions of dollars to the Australian taxpayer. Their idea of building capacity is words; it is not action. The Labor Party fundamentally do not believe that it is appropriate to take unpopular measures that may in fact inoculate us against the challenges that lie ahead.

I come back to where I started. For everyday Australians the cost of living is the number 1 issue. For everyday Australians who get an electricity bill or a water bill, who have to pay school fees or who get bills from a hospital or a doctor, this is the issue. They are now facing higher interest rates. They are facing banks that are price signalling. The banks are actively out there, engaging in price signalling to each other so that they can increase interest rates above and beyond what the Reserve Bank does. We are the only parties that have laid down a plan that will take the upward pressure off interest rates, with $50 billion of cuts to the budget that will deliver a smaller fiscal expansion and real surpluses into the future. We are the only parties that are prepared to stick our necks out, to call it as we see it on banking reform, on real telecommunications activity and on doing something meaningful about climate change. We are the only parties that are prepared, when in government, to undertake the reforms so necessary—be it industrial relations reform, welfare reform, tax reform or productivity reform. We are the only parties that deliver on our word—we are the only ones.

I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, do not be conned by the Labor Party’s rhetoric about Hanson economics. We know Pauline Hanson. We know what Hansonism is. The Labor Party is a party that lacks courage. The Labor party is a party that seems to have great one-liners but never has great delivery. The Labor Party is a party that is all bluster and no soul. We have a Prime Minister that is all talk and no courage—a Prime Minister that is more concerned about having the power than using it. I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, if you want commitment to economic reform, if you want commitment to the hard yards, if you want commitment to deliver tomorrow’s prosperity, only the coalition can do that. It is only the coalition that has the courage to match its plans.

See this speech in context