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

Listening carefully to that question time, I was able to reflect with my colleagues on the fact that—although perhaps we did not pick it up—in the last days of Kevin Rudd, the member for Griffith, as Prime Minister he became increasingly shrill when answering questions in question time. He was clearly a man under pressure. Perhaps we did not pick it up in the way that we should have, but we did notice that it had occurred.

What I and my colleagues picked up today is that this week our Prime Minister has been incredibly shrill. Our Prime Minister has been extremely nasty and has begun to answer every question with a nasty statement personally attacking the individual who asked the question. Quite clearly, she is missing the praetorian guard that normally a prime minister has that is capable of delivering the blows in question time. But what is most surprising about this is that the Prime Minister should fall into this form so quickly after an election. Just a few months after the election, the Prime Minister seems to have her own backbench acting like an ill disciplined bunch—be it the member for Capricornia who today came out and said that she supports gay marriage even though the Prime Minister herself says that she does not or the member for Wills, who said it yesterday and talked about gay marriage, at the same time as the Minister for Trade said, ‘These are the things that should not distract us.’

But, of course, the Prime Minister has had cause to be distracted—be it the words of Citizen Graham Richardson, be it the words of Citizen Paul Howes or be it the words of Citizen Karl Bitar. This is a government that, before our eyes, is fracturing. The problem for Australian families is that they are being left out of the equation. Australian families are no longer being discussed by this government. Australian families are the victims of this government. Australian families are being left behind by a government that has so carelessly forgotten their interests.

The Labor Party in government no longer is talking about the cost of electricity; it is the coalition that is talking about the cost of electricity. The Labor Party in government does not talk about the 13 per cent increase in the cost of water; it is the coalition that talks about it. The Labor Party does not talk about the increase in hospital prices of seven per cent; it is the coalition that talks about it. The Labor Party, which pretends to care about child care, does not talk about child care. Child care has gone up seven per cent in the last year alone, well above the inflation figure—let alone education expenses more generally which have gone up six per cent. It is the coalition that is raising these issues. It is the coalition that has laid down a plan. It is the coalition that raises the challenge of rising interest rates. It is the coalition that has the courage to lay down a nine-point plan to get more competition into banking. It is the coalition that has the courage to introduce into this place legislation that takes on the big banks and oil companies on price signalling. It is the coalition that is getting on with the job of doing something for those families that are struggling under the everyday increases in prices. That is because we understand what people are going through.

Many Australians are asking themselves how it is that we are in a mining boom and how it is that we are meant to have this great economy, this wonderful economy—as the Treasurer and Prime Minister keeps saying, the strongest economy in the OECD—and yet we are paying more and getting less. That is what they are asking themselves. It is a reasonable comment. Quite clearly, the Australian economy is patchy. Quite clearly, the Australian economy is performing at different speeds. Quite clearly, there are some people who are doing exceptionally well and we say, ‘Hoorah! We want that, we want our country to be strong,’ but there are so many Australian families that are wondering now how they are going to pay for Christmas presents. I am serious about it, because if you have got a $300,000 mortgage then in the last fortnight alone your mortgage repayment after tax has gone up $1,000.

There may well be lots of economic justification for the RBA moving on interest rates, and it may well be the case that there are so-called justifications for the banks moving above the RBA rate—none of which I buy—but I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, emphatically that to simply ignore the impact on Australian families is wrong. The Leader of the Opposition will not do it, the coalition will not do it, because we are prepared to stand up for people that at the moment are voiceless in Gillard Australia. We are prepared to speak for those people. We are prepared to recognise that the cost of living is hurting and that a new carbon tax will increase electricity bills. If Paul Howes says it, believe it to be true because he is simply reflecting what is common sense, that if you put a carbon price and a tax on electricity it will go up in price. That is something that every Australian family is going to face.

On top of that, with rising interest rates, economists—be they compassionate people or not—can at times provide solace. When the markets factor in an increase of at least another 50 basis points from the Reserve Bank over the next 12 months, that means more hurt for everyday Australian families. It means higher interest rates, higher credit card rates and higher small business loans, and Australian families are wondering how they are going to pay for it, and they are right to. I thought, as they thought, and the rhetoric says, that education is free, but education has gone up seven per cent in the last 12 months. We are meant to have a free universal medical system, but we know it is not free because hospital and medical services have increased seven per cent. We know that if you live in the outer western suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne, or if you live in the suburbs of Brisbane or any other major capital city or, for that matter, any of the regional cities, it is very hard to own a home unless both parents are working. So many of those parents desperately need child care. It is not a lifestyle choice any more. The cost of housing is so beyond Australian families that we now have one of the least affordable home entry points in the developed world. Believe that—and it is directly linked to the fact that there is insufficient supply because you have got state governments that are more focused on re-election than they are on making hard decisions about zoning. It is also about a political party, the Labor Party, that is more focused on preserving its power than making its power work for the benefit of the people.

The fundamental point here is that for everyday Australians there is less and less choice. There is less choice in the cost of housing, there is less choice in the cost of electricity, there is less choice in the cost of telecommunications, there is less choice in hospital care and there is less choice in education. They have to pay these bills—they have no choice. According to the official data, the CPI—which increasingly the Reserve Bank itself has said is not a proper indicator of the everyday cost of living—comes in at a reasonable level. Why? Because computers and flat screen TVs have come down 20 per cent, primarily because of the strong Australian dollar and because these products in general have come down from China. But that distorts the figure because, if you are really struggling to meet the bills, you are not focused on a flat screen TV. You are focused on how to pay the electricity bill, the water bill, how to pay for school uniforms and how to pay for school excursions—whether your kids can come to Canberra or not. They are the bills people fret over.

As we approach Christmas it has not been the usual practice of the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates in December, because that is like a body blow to the heart of retail in Australia. But that body blow has been delivered by the Reserve Bank and it has been delivered by the banks. It has all come about because of this government’s inability to control its expenditure and this government’s inability to make a hard decision.

That is what I said to the Prime Minister across the table today: ‘You have no ticker.’ And she does not have any ticker. She has no courage; she has no core. The Prime Minister does not understand that in order to deliver real reform and in order to share the opportunity of the future you have to make hard decisions. It was this coalition, including the shadow minister for finance and my colleagues, who went with courage in the election campaign and announced $50 billion of cuts to government expenditure—and they were hard cuts and we know they were not popular, but they were the right thing to do. They were the right thing to do because we know that when you have the most generous terms of trade in 50 years, that when you have an economy growing at above three per cent and that when you have inflation at a reasonable level, if you do not run budget surpluses then when the bad times come again you are ill prepared. We know that because we have been there. We know that you can never climb a mountain unless you do the training. We know that you can never deliver security into the future unless the government itself has prepared the nation for the darkest of days. We know that because we have been there. And we are scathing and we will not let up at all on this government for its lack of courage, because we have displayed the courage that it does not have. We are the ones that have been prepared to do the yards, to get the budget back to surplus faster, to ensure that we can start to pay down some of that debt—and the debt is going to be a major issue into the future.

Bear this in mind: Ireland and Portugal are on the threshold of absolute collapse, and Spain is not so far away. In 2011-12 you are going to see one of the biggest bond refinancing programs the world has ever seen on any measure, as all the sovereign debt of these countries that have borrowed so much over the years needs to be borrowed again. On top of that, corporations rolling over their debt means that ultimately Australia should not be in the position of going with a begging bowl to the rest of world, begging the world to pay for school halls that are still being built four years after the negative quarter, begging for the world to pay for all of the waste—the record waste from the Gillard government and the Rudd government—and begging the world to pay for the massive deficits and debt that have been left behind by countless state Labor governments. We are going to the world and begging them for their money at exactly the wrong time, which puts our economy in peril. It puts our welfare at peril at a time when we are sucking the juices out of the world, trying to take advantage of a mining boom and a commodity boom when we need that capital to grow the mines.

I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker: this is a difficult time to run the Australian economy, and the government has got it dead wrong. Every Australian family knows that if they are spending more than they are collecting, if their debt continues to grow, then the day will come when the bank comes knocking. So, too, for our country. If we continue to borrow money at a hundred million dollars a day at a time when we are in a prosperous environment then I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, when the tough times come there are few bullets left in the gun of the government to try and ensure that Australians get through the darkest hours.

This is a significant moment. We will have Australians fretting about Christmas. We will have Australians fretting about the bills that come after Christmas. We will have Australians who wonder why they have been left behind by the Gillard government. I say to those Australians on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition and my colleagues: we will not forget you, we will not leave you behind, we will always speak for you and we in the coalition will have the courage to make the hard decisions that ensure that Australia can get through the tough times and that your families can get through the tough times.

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