Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Over the last couple of months, Australians have witnessed flood, fire and cyclones. Their hearts have been touched by the damage that they have seen. The destruction went on for two months and the losses have totalled billions and are in every state—at least $6 to 8 billion in the agricultural sector alone. But perhaps the biggest real disaster that Australians have had to confront over the last two months is Labor’s economic management. The real impact of Labor’s disastrous economic management has been shown up in these days. When there is a need for the government to do something important for the country, to undertake and fulfil one of its core responsibilities to rebuild after a disaster, Labor has no money left in the till—there is nothing there. In spite of its proposals to have new taxes on carbon, new taxes on mining, new taxes on alternative fuels, new taxes on LPG and increases in other taxes, it has to raise a special tax to undertake one of its core responsibilities: to rebuild the country that has been damaged by natural disasters.

Natural disasters are not uncommon in Australia. Indeed, in every federal budget and in every state budget money is put aside in a contingency reserve to deal with the impact of the government’s obligations to rebuild the country in those circumstances. Dorothea Mackellar recalls in her poetry that Australians have to live with disasters; they come almost every year. And almost every year—indeed, every year up until now—governments have responded as they should by funding them from their own budget, making cuts if they have to, but recognising the priority of rebuilding the country.

Previous governments did not require a new tax to fund the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy and previous governments did not need a new tax to repair the damage after Cyclone Larry. There was no special tax to fund the needs of a 10-year drought. There was no special tax to deal with the floods in 1974 or in 1955. They were major disasters and they were dealt with as governments should deal with them. Good governments put aside in the good times so that there will be money for the bad. We save in the good times for the rainy day. We had a very big rainy day and we should have had the money to be able to do the job to make the repairs.

What is worse is that the money was there when this government came to office, the money was there when this government took the reins, but it has been wasted. It has been wasted through mismanagement. We know that this government has been completely incapable of insulating Australia against virtually anything, let alone natural disasters. Waste has been the theme of this government. It has failed in its policy development and there has been very poor administration of the programs that it has implemented. The government has presided over extraordinary waste, extraordinarily poor administration and extraordinarily poor policy. This government has been presiding over one mess after another.

I guess the icons or the symbols of this waste have been programs like the Building the Education Revolution—the overpriced school halls; the insulation programs; Green Loans et cetera. Let me go through some of the already recorded waste of this government since coming to office: $8 billion, including a $1.7 billion blowout in the Building the Education Revolution program; $2.4 billion wasted on the pink batts program; and $850 million wasted on the solar homes program. The laptops-in-schools program blew out by $1.2 billion and it has only delivered half its intended purpose. The Green Loans program saw $300 million wasted and the scheme scrapped. There was $81.9 million wasted on the ETS we are now not going to have. What about the waste that accompanied the government’s laptops-in-schools program? What about the waste that has been associated with its management of so many of its programs?

Labor has wasted seven times the amount of money it hopes to collect from this levy. It has wasted $13 billion and it has the gall to ask the Australian taxpayers to pay up another $1.8 billion to do core business of the government, the very things that the government should have been putting aside for over the years. It has squandered the inheritance and now it has to go and ask for another tax to undertake its basic core duties. The government has a $350 billion budget every year, but it cannot find $1.8 billion to repair the country after a chain of natural disasters; it cannot find $1.8 billion without Australians having to pay another tax?

Who knows how much the government is actually going to collect from this levy? The Treasurer today could not tell us how many people are going to pay. We do know that, since the government announced that it was going to have a $1.8 billion collection from this new tax, it has exempted about half a million more Australians from paying it. How can the government still be going to collect the same amount of money even though it has exempted an extra half a million people from paying this tax? Let us look at those people who are being asked to pay the tax and those who are being exempted. Everyone who received the $1,000 welfare payment will be exempt from the tax. It does not matter how much you have actually lost, it does not matter whether your business is ruined, you have to have received this $1,000 payment; otherwise, you will not be exempted from this tax.

What people need to be aware of is that there are probably one to two million Australians that are eligible to collect this payment. We saw in Cairns queues three blocks long of people lining up to get the payment. You know, you do not actually have to live in a flood area to get this payment. You did not have to have any water go into your house at all. You did not have to have any damage. You did not have to have any real inconvenience other than that your power was out for more than 48 hours—or your gas or your sewerage. You did not actually have to have any losses to be eligible for this $1,000 payment.

I heard the Treasurer say on one occasion that he hoped no-one would claim the $1,000 just because they were without electricity for 48 hours. If that is what he hoped, his guidelines do not say that. They are all entitled to claim it. But many decent people did not. They did not bother to claim, because they felt they had no losses and were not morally entitled to it. But those people, if they do not claim the $1,000, are now going to have to pay the tax. So that is a powerful incentive for people who are really not entitled to it or ought not to get it to go and claim the $1,000 so that they can get out of paying Labor’s new tax. Of course, that provides all the wrong incentives. Those who have given to public appeals and paid out of their own pocket significant moneys to help their neighbours—as good Australians do and as all of us who care for our fellow man do—will still have to pay the tax, but people who claimed a $1,000 payment even though they had no personal discomfort will be let off paying this tax.

So the government has no idea how much it is going to collect, but what it does know is that, once the money is collected, it cannot trust its own bureaucracy to spend it wisely. It has at least learned that: that no Labor administration can be trusted to spend the money. There have been people in Queensland also worried about the Queensland fund. Anna Bligh has not shown much record in being able to capably manage her budget either, and people have been reluctant to trust the government because of Labor’s poor record. Even Labor now acknowledges that it cannot deliver. So what it is going to have now is a new bureaucracy to oversee the bureaucracy that is going to oversee the bureaucracy that is actually supposed to deliver the repairs. This is the extreme of another round of Labor waste.

The reality is that it is a government’s responsibility to repair the country when there are problems. The government should be putting money aside in good times so that it has the money when it needs it in bad times. A government that has wasted $13 billion of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money has no moral right to ask for another dip from those people who have endured so much already. (Time expired)

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