Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper. I do not know if you noticed but, while that speech was being delivered, there was plenty of chatter going on behind the Leader of the Opposition. This is the second last day of parliament under the new parliamentary arrangements in which the opposition leader said that he would be delivering alternative policies for Australia. He could have brought in some supporters but, instead, what he had was just chatter and a very, very flat effort indeed.

This is a debate, ostensibly at least, about government and opposition agendas—policy agendas. That is what the parliament should be debating, so I want to address that directly in terms of the government’s agenda. I will go through our budget policy which is to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13, which would be the fastest fiscal consolidation since 1960 and we would be the only major advanced country to achieve this.

The Leader of the Opposition has said repeatedly that we should not have gone into deficit, that there should not have been deficits in this country. When more than $100 billion, and at one point an estimated $200 billion, is slashed off the nation’s taxation revenue the prescription of the Leader of the Opposition would have been then to cut a corresponding amount out of government spending—that is, to double the negative impact of the deepest global recession since the Great Depression by keeping the budget in balance at a time of severe trauma for the nation’s revenues. In that decision he would have destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians who wanted the dignity of work but who would have been thrown out of work through the cold-hearted policies of the Leader of the Opposition. Fortunately he did not get a chance to implement that particular policy prescription.

As a result of Labor’s efforts through economic stimulus and the efforts of small and larger businesses in this country, instead of losing jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created in Australia at a time when millions of people lost their jobs in Europe and North America. The government have set about implementing an agenda to deal with some other major economic difficulties bequeathed to this nation by the previous coalition government. I refer to easing capacity constraints and lifting productivity growth. We need to ease the capacity constraints, namely the skill shortages and the infrastructure drought, inflicted upon this country by 12 years of coalition sloth and neglect.

The former Treasurer of this country, Peter Costello, said that infrastructure investment is not a responsibility of the Commonwealth of Australia. They are saying that they did not believe in investing in infrastructure, including in regional Australia, and they failed to invest in the necessary skills formation to enable this country to deal with those bottlenecks. As a result there were inflationary pressures and, right now with the two-speed economy that we have, these capacity constraints are increasingly severe. It is because of the foresight of Labor governments in understanding these problems and dealing with them that we are making the necessary investments, and I call that a very positive agenda for the nation’s future.

The government are setting about dealing with another great legacy from the previous coalition government, and that is a massive slump in productivity growth in this country. Why is this important? Because today’s productivity growth is tomorrow’s prosperity. Yesterday’s productivity growth was negative. Multifactor productivity growth in this country between 2004 and 2008 was negative. Australia was less productive at the end of the period of the previous coalition government than four years before that. We are revitalising productivity growth through our efforts in creating a seamless national economy and, of course, in rolling out the National Broadband Network, about which I will have more to say in a moment.

We are embracing important elements of tax reform by giving small businesses much needed tax relief. So much for the coalition parties being the parties of small business! What are they doing in terms of our efforts to provide tax relief for small business? They are opposing it. What about our efforts in providing infrastructure investment in the regions? They are opposing it. What about our efforts in increasing the superannuation guarantee payments from nine per cent to 12 per cent to give people a secure income in retirement? They are opposing it. Why? Because they are opposing the minerals resource rent tax that would fund these important productivity-raising initiatives.

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