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

Che Guevara; that’s right! And who could forget the $2.5 billion on pink batts? What a fiasco that was. How can you trust them with money? There was the Green Loans program: $300 million wasted—a program finally cancelled with allegations of corruption. How can you trust Labor with money? Remember how they promised 36 GP superclinics in 2007-08? There are only eight currently in operation, and we do not even know if they have GPs in them. And this mob are now asking the Australian people for more money, whereas the money they have already been given they cannot spend properly. If the government had not wasted money on those school halls, on those pink batts, on the Green Loans program—had they not wasted money on a scale never seen before in Australia—the money would be in the budget to repair Queensland time and time again, without yet another levy being imposed on the Australian people. It is not just us who is saying this. Someone who has been critical of me, Henry Ergas, observed in the Australian:

… additional taxation allows the government to call itself fiscally conservative without seriously reviewing the efficiency of existing spending programs.

At the same time, by relaxing the government’s spending constraint, the levy reduces the pressure to ensure reconstruction resources are used wisely.

So that is just eight points. Hang onto your seat, Swannie: there are two more to come.

Point 9: Labor could have already paid this levy simply through the interest on its own debt. It will intrigue the Australian people to know the net interest bill on the Rudd-Gillard Labor government debt of $4.4 billion this financial year alone would have paid the flood levy two and a half times over. That is just the interest that this man has managed to accumulate in three short years. The interest payable this year would have paid this levy two and a half times over. It is outrageous. In the 2012-13 and 2013-14 financial years the net interest bill will be $5.9 billion. That amount could rebuild Queensland.

Point 10—and this is perhaps the most significant of all: this government should lead by example. I would not take this government as an example on anything, other than the ability to waste money. But I believe the government should look within their own budget, as they have asked 4.66 million Australians to do—as 4.66 million Australians will have to do. As those Australians seek to try and reduce their household expenditure to save the money to pay for this flood levy, so too must this government have the ticker to start looking within their own ranks to find the money. But every time there is a bit of pushback, be it from the member for Melbourne, the member for Denison or anyone else, they fall over. They are men of straw; they fall over. In a little bit of wind, away she goes—flies out. And why? Because they do not have the ticker to stick with their decisions. That has been in the DNA of this mob for the last four years: no ticker.

How intriguing it was to witness the hearings of the House Standing Committee on Economics inquiry into this flood levy. I remember being here for the introduction of A New Tax System. I think the Labor Party held six different inquiries in the Senate into the GST and into A New Tax System. They went for months and months, and they were crying about the fact that in this place they were not allowed to speak, they did not get the chance to have hearings and so on. Well, because of a screw-up by the Treasurer’s office—

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