Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I do note that the Prime Minister now has a penchant for the personal pronoun at every turn.

May I suggest that it is time for the Prime Minister to take a reality check on the current debate in this country on how to fund reconstruction necessary after the recent natural disasters? There are three undeniable facts. First, it is true that an individual instance of a natural disaster may be unforeseen; that is a fact. However, secondly—and this is a very important point—natural disaster as a policy issue is not unforeseen. That, too, is a fact. We know that a natural disaster happens in some form, and probably occurs, every month of the year in Australia, whether it be drought, storms, floods or bushfires. You do not have to be Nostradamus to be able to predict that. Donald Rumsfield would probably call it, ‘an unforeseen foreseen event’.

That then leads to the third undeniable fact: governments should always be ready for natural disasters. Natural disasters are not uncommon in Australia. Indeed, every federal budget must make contingencies to meet the government’s obligations to rebuild in the face of natural disasters. However, the government—in the long tradition of Labor governments—has opted for the tax route—the lazy way out—to raise a special tax to undertake one of its core responsibilities. Instead of funding it from the money it has already extracted from the Australian people by way of taxes it is going to impose yet another tax.

It is a core responsibility of government to be ready for such events. However, because in the space of three years Labor have squandered the magnificent financial position created by the Howard government over 11½ years, they have to resort to a new tax. Previous governments did not require a new tax to fund the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy; the previous government 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; and there was no special tax to deal with the floods of 1974. Good budget management tells you that you should not rely on one-off tax rises every time a natural disaster occurs.

It is like taking out insurance; it is a prudent financial decision that should be written into any risk assessment. Instead, the sad fact is that the government is still recklessly borrowing $100 million a day to feed its spending binge. As the shadow Treasurer said yesterday that the government is spending $45 billion on interest repayments over the next four years alone.

That is $45 billion on the debt it has run up because it cannot manage a budget. It would not know a surplus if it fell over one. Over the next four years the government intends to spend $1.5 trillion, and we should not underestimate the long-term damage that Australians will have to wear because of Labor’s economic mismanagement.

It cannot organise itself, with the huge revenues it already collects, to finance one of its core responsibilities. Instead, Labor defaults to a new tax. It is part of its pavlovian response: tax and spend, tax and spend. Over the last three years Labor has increased taxes on cars, it has increased taxes on alcohol and increased tax on cigarettes. Its history of waste is just appalling. The waste flagship is the Building the Education Revolution. This Prime Minister’s legacy from her days as the education minister is billions of dollars wasted under ministerial incompetence that we have not seen before in this country. It is a shameful record. Then there were the home insulation programs—massive waste—the solar heating program and the laptops in schools program. Labor has wasted multiple times the amount of money it hopes to collect from the flood tax.

The government has a budget of $350 billion every year, but it cannot find $1.8 billion to repair the country after the natural disasters we have experienced. It cannot find $1.8 billion without Australians having to pay another tax. Labor has actually been exposed on this one because, in a moment of candour, the Prime Minister admitted that if the reconstruction costs were in excess of the estimate she could find the necessary cuts. We plead with the Prime Minister: identify those cuts now. It is not the time to raise the cost of living by slugging Australians with new taxes. People have been hit hard by the floods, Australians are already experiencing rising interest rates, the cost of living is on the rise, electricity prices are rising, schooling costs are rising, transport costs are rising, Labor’s National Broadband Network will result in higher costs for basic communications and the government plans to introduce this year not only a flood tax but a carbon tax and a mining tax.

What is quite extraordinary, though, is that yesterday in question time the Treasurer could not tell us how many people are going to be hit by the flood tax. He could come up with the final number of $1.8 billion but he had no idea how many people would be paying it.

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