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

that is a siren call that has been around for literally thousands of years and we should avoid that call.

And when the Treasurer says, ‘Come on board with consensus economic reform; join with us on this great united journey, the Labor Party and the Liberal Party working together to deliver ongoing economic reform, as we have in this beautiful partnership for the last 25 years,’ I say to myself: that does not seem quite right. It is another siren call.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would say to you that, just as the sailors many years ago avoided the seductive temptation to come into the bay and end up hitting the rocks, we too will not join with a government that is going to lead our nation onto the rocks. We will not go on that journey. We will not sail into that shore. I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that it is the Labor Party—writ large in the last three years—that has not had the fundamental ingredient so necessary to delivering real economic reform, and that is courage. Courage is the main ingredient. It is the flour and wheat in the bread.

It is a fact that you cannot deliver economic reform if you do not have ticker. This is a government with no ticker. They had no ticker when they had a 12-seat majority, so why would you expect them to have ticker when they are three seats short of a majority, when they have cobbled together an unholy coalition of the ideological Left and the ideological Right? As someone said to me—and I will not attribute this quote—‘Before the election the Labor Party was all right wing and after the electorate it is all left wing.’ Why? Because it has not only confused ideology; it has confused goals. Before the election no carbon tax; after the election, ‘Let’s have a carbon tax.’ Before the election, fiscal conservatives; after the election a $2½ billion hole in the budget. Before the election, the Labor Party were all about doing the hard yards of tax reform; after the election they will not even release the Henry documents! Even after the election they said they were going to ‘let the sunshine come in’. That is what they said. They were going to open the doors and have a new, clean breeze pass through this parliament, so that everyone can see the true inner workings of the public sector.

At the first hurdle today, when a motion was before this House to release all of the documentation in relation to the review of tax, which was paid for by Australian taxpayers, this mob went to water—disappointingly the Independents went to water too. There was, out of all of this, a lack of commitment. If they do not have the guts to release the documentation on a review that delivered 138 recommendations of which they accepted only 1½, how can you expect them to have courage for real reform, which from time to time will be unpopular? I would have thought that, if they believed in reform, there would be no more compelling case than the flow of capital and the flow of finance and the challenges that involves at this very moment.

The coalition stands by our plan to have more competition in the delivery of financial services. And after the Labor Party criticised that proposal, we now hear that they are accepting it. They are now saying that they are on board. The Labor Party now say that they want to join with us and hold hands in taking an approach to deliver more competition.

The difference between the Labor Party and the coalition is that the coalition has a proposal. The difference between the Labor Party and the coalition is that the coalition has done it before and will do it again. Previously we have facilitated economic reform. Economic reform improves trade. It increases trade. It liberates the individual. It empowers individuals to create more wealth. Reform is not about increasing the cost of business; reform is about decreasing the cost of business. Reform is about freeing up and liberating business to get on with the job of wealth creation. That is what microeconomic reform is about.

When this government was in opposition, it sought to derail the creation of the Productivity Commission. Now the Labor Party in government will not even heed the words of the Chairman of the Productivity Commission, Gary Banks, and put in place a system that ensures that there is a cost-benefit analysis on all major projects so that taxpayers get the best value for money.

The purpose of economic reform is to facilitate greater productivity. ‘Productivity’ is a word which has not passed the lips of the Labor Party since Kevin Rudd, as opposition leader in this place, was asked, ‘What is productivity?’ and he could not explain it, having talked about it for days in advance. My colleagues who were around at the time would remember that.

Productivity is about improving the output for workers. It is about improving output in the economy. The Labor Party does not talk about productivity. Why? Because their biggest investment in infrastructure, the $43 billion NBN, is in fact a detractor from productivity for the next eight years. The Labor Party does not talk about productivity because the most significant productivity contribution that can be made at this very moment is to increase work force participation.

The Leader of the Opposition is the only person to have laid down policies in the last three years that improve workforce participation. By targeting people under the age of 30 on welfare, by helping people over the age of 30 on welfare, by putting in place a genuine paid parental leave scheme, this man laid down the foundations for greater work force participation and therefore greater productivity. But it goes further. The coalition was the only party that had real courage to put in place a $50 billion fiscal consolidation plan, which is the only way you can take upward pressure off interest rates.

Let it be known by the Australian people that over the last three years interest rates on average under Labor have been higher than they were for the 11 years of the coalition. For home buyers and for small businesses interest rates on average have been higher under Labor in three years—even when the cash rate of the Reserve Bank got down to just three per cent. The Labor Party are overseeing a period of higher interest rates. That means there is less accessible credit. That means the wheels of enterprise suffer and are unable to run on a fair road. And this proves that the Labor Party are not serious about economic reform. The Labor Party are all bluff and bluster and words of ill advice. (Time expired)

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