Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to consider the appropriation bills that are before us today. The main purpose of these bills, of course, is to propose appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the ordinary annual services of the government in addition to those provided in the 2010-11 budget. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 is around $1.4 billion and the total appropriation in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 is just over $1 billion. These are appropriations required for moneys that were not anticipated at the time of the framing of the budget, so they are overruns or expenses adding up to close to $2½ billion that were not anticipated some eight months ago. In the context of these bills, there are funds being appropriated to support what would appear to be bad management and poor process. In other words, these appropriation bills will become a symbol of the incompetence, the waste and the failure of due process that have come to characterise this administration.

For example, for the Department of Climate Change and Energy, there is an appropriation of $15 million to support functions that were simply transferred from the former Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. Why do you need an extra $15 million for a new bunch of public servants to do exactly what a previous bunch of public servants had to do? Fifteen million dollars rolls easily off the tongue. It is not considered by those on the other side to be of any consequence. But it is a lot of money—a lot of money—and, at a time when households are pulling in their heads to try and make ends meet, to live within their means, we have a government that continues with this approach to public funding and the management of taxpayers’ funds which is unacceptable.

There is $45.6 million for the closure of the Home Insulation Program. Now, the government made provision for this in the last budget. They spent all last year and part of the year before with red faces, apologising, as community resentment built by the day over the total incompetence of the Home Insulation Program. Given the public outcry that occurred with this program, you would have thought that the government would have at least given every consideration to what it was going to cost to mop up the mess—how much it would take to close the damn thing down and how much it was going to cost for public servants and others to do their best to fix the situation and satisfy the literally hundreds of thousands of householders who were dudded under this pathetic and mismanaged program.

Six months later we find another $46 million, more or less, is required for the closure of this program. They still got that wrong. What can they get right in managing taxpayers’ money? This is another example of waste that just keeps on giving. The government seem incapable of taking full responsibility for this program: for the waste, the hurt and the deaths that have occurred. This program has so much against it, yet they are not capable of properly costing even the closure of the program.

In relation to Immigration and Citizenship, of the $2.5 billion nearly $300 million is supplementary funding for operational costs associated with the management of offshore asylum seekers. In the space of six months the government has underestimated the cost of border protection to the tune of $300 million. It shows how out of control this government is when it comes to managing our borders. We now have about 6,000 people on the mainland due to be processed. We have boats arriving almost weekly, even though it is the wrong season. Individuals are putting their lives at great risk, as we saw tragically a few weeks ago. This government provides absolutely no deterrent for people who risk breaking through our borders. It has no control over the borders, which means people have no confidence in the whole immigration program. Is it any wonder that people are concerned more generally about the way this country is being managed and its borders are being protected?

No country has even signed up to the East Timor proposition. The Prime Minister had a thought bubble before the election and put out there as the ultimate solution that there would be a processing centre set up in East Timor. After six months of the most assiduous representations by our departmental officials all over the region, not one country has shown a scintilla of interest in signing up for that program. Yet Nauru is still willing to sign the UN agreements. It is just pure politics that is stopping this government from doing what it has to do. It is letting politics interfere with the cost of running these programs and it is threatening human life because of this lack of deterrent for people who seek to break through our borders.

In the space of six months the government have underestimated the cost of spending on the border protection program to the tune of $300 million. We are now billions of dollars behind what was anticipated in the forward estimates some two or three years ago. This is a symbol of great waste and incompetence. The measures in these appropriation bills are endless symbols of the waste and incompetence by this government. This is a snapshot of some of the activities to be funded through these appropriations. These modest amounts add up to significant sums—in this case, $2.3 billion. The government would say these modest amounts are neither here nor there: ‘What is $15 million here or $300 million there?’

This is why we have a debt heading towards $90 billion. This is why we are aiming at a deficit this year of $40 billion and had one of $57 billion last year—the two worst deficit situations in our history. It has occurred because if you do not look after the pennies you do not look after the pounds. How can you justify a $40 billion deficit? How can you justify a $57 billion deficit and then stand there and say that you are managing this economy? How can you put up appropriations like this that demonstrate enormous incompetence? Overruns on so many programs should have been anticipated but have not been anticipated.

Last night I stood in the main chamber and debated the levy for flood reconstruction. This levy will raise nearly $2 billion. If the government had stuck with its budget of six months ago it would have paid for that levy and more. If the government had shown that it was able to manage this place without further waste, without further overspending—if it could live within its means like every Australian family is being required to do at this point in time, despite massive increases in prices—we would not have to have the levy. It is quite ironic. We have two debates going on almost in tandem that demonstrate that the money was there, is there, to pay for that levy. There was no need for the levy, but of course this is a government whose instinct is to tax, to spend and to borrow.

All the government have done since they arrived is to borrow, tax and spend. Where has there been one hard decision on the fiscal front? Even the measures towards flood reconstruction that they are paying for out of savings were basically all measures that we had identified at the time of the election. This government pilloried us in a political sense for putting up those savings. Now, after we went out and took the heat for those political decisions some months ago, they have taken those savings. Who has bleated about any of those savings? More or less one or two interest groups have, and they have caved in on those. They caved into the Greens. They bought off the Greens and Independents with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to enable their program to go forward. They cannot even make a tough decision and make it stick. They cave in to the political demands of the crossbenchers.

It must be remembered that this government, in the middle of all this, is borrowing $100 million a day. A lot of the interest rate increases are because this government is still borrowing $100 million a day. In other words, every 17 days this government borrows what it is going to collect on the levy. Every 17 days it has borrowed an amount equivalent to the levy. This government is being exposed almost daily for its incompetence and its lack of fiscal rectitude. There is a $45 billion interest bill to be paid over the next four years. This is incompetence in the extreme. There is no plan to address this funding and fiscal situation. The government claims that a surplus will be achieved in 2012-13. It may be manufactured, but what it is not telling you—the dead cat on the table—is the situation with the structural deficit. It is the issue that needs to be explained and it is the issue that the Treasurer has studiously avoided. The blow-out of the underlying structural deficit puts a lie to all the rhetoric we hear about the government having some plan to address our debt and deficit situation.

So what is a structural deficit? A structural deficit represents ongoing spending commitments that are relied on from revenue that will not persist—in this case, the mining boom. It is a bit like a situation where someone who has been achieving, say, $20,000 a year in overtime for the last couple of years then thinks: ‘I’ll take out a mortgage. I can now afford a $500,000 mortgage with my regular pay and overtime.’ The expectation is that the overtime will continue into the future. So the worker takes out a $500,000, 25-year mortgage and then finds out two years later that the overtime has stopped. The excess demand for the products that the company was producing has dried up. He is back on his normal pay. All of a sudden he realises—

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