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

He says it is a supplement. It is not real money: is that it, sunshine? It is not real money. Two billion dollars is not real money. Somehow it is in your budget, so either it is real money and it is really going to affect Australians or, as the member for Lindsay would say, it is not real money. I say to you, sir, that Australian families are struggling, and particularly in your electorate of Lindsay. Your budget is indifferent to the plight of your people. Your budget is ignorant of the fact that everyday Australians are struggling: they are finding it harder to pay for higher electricity bills, for higher mortgage repayments, for higher fruit and vegetable prices, for higher petrol prices. This is a government that is overseeing a deterioration in the living standards of middle Australia. And why? Because of their own fiscal recklessness.

There is one figure set that illustrates this more graphically than any other. It is the fact that since Labor was elected the Public Service in Canberra has increased by 20,000 employees. Last night in the so-called tough budget the government increased the size of the Public Service by a further 1,100 employees, including 200 in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet alone and 55 in the Department of the Treasury. So at that time, when they are talking tough and expecting Australians to cut their cloth, this is a government that is going on a binge, a binge that is based on politics and not policy. Of course, in the budget there are reflections of their policy failures, which Australian families are now paying for. The $1.2 billion blow-out in the computers in schools program grew a further $200 million in last night's budget to $1.4 billion. The government's failed border protection policy has grown out by an additional $1.75 billion, and I suspect we will hear more about the growing bill for their failed border protection policies. What about the $111 million that is going to have to be spent mopping up the failed pink batts policy? How about that one, Mr Deputy Speaker? Of course this all reflects the fact that the Labor Party cannot rein in its spending. The Treasurer keeps talking about spending growth. He is working off a very high base because of course the government went for the credit card during the financial crisis, handing out $900 cheques, building school halls, installing pink batts, putting solar panels on roofs—they did it all. They smoked the credit card at the moment when Australia could not afford to have an excessive fiscal stimulus. It turns out that Australia gets a silver medal, or maybe even a bronze medal, for the biggest fiscal stimulus in the world as a percentage of GDP, and now we are paying a heavy price for it.

At no time in the forward estimates—and wasn't the Treasurer caught out by this today!—or at any time has the government's expenditure as a percentage of GDP been as low as it was in the last year of the Howard government. The Treasurer says that we were a profligate government—

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