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

Queensland, of course, has been the most heavily impacted as a result of the natural disasters. The latest snapshot of the economy shows the underlying resilience in the economy is entirely the result of good luck in recent times rather than good management. The economy is receiving the biggest boost from offshore in a very long time, certainly much bigger than anything the coalition had during its years in government. We might expect that this government would be acting to leverage this bountiful windfall with sound policies to lock in a sustainable future. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The government continues with its wasteful spending. Households are being careful with their money whilst the government just seems to be spending more. And the Treasurer had the audacity to stand in this place boasting about a surplus. What surplus was he referring to? Was it the surplus he might deliver in two years time. He said 'we are making the savings'—the savings that in the next fiscal year he is actually going to outspend by $2.5 billion, which illustrates the fraudulent words of the Treasurer in this place. But what is most concerning for households is that, while they are being asked to pull back and live within their means, the government is not doing so. The government is wasting money hand over fist, from set top boxes to an extra $110 million dealing with their pink batts issue.

From our perspective the greatest risk to the Australian economy is the impact of the carbon tax, the mining tax and the flood levy. At this particular point in time, after we have just had a full quarter of negative growth, albeit a headline negative growth, and after we have just had three months of the economy going backwards, what is the very worst thing the government could do? It would be to penalise households with a flood levy, to penalise the mining industry with a mining tax and to penalise every Australian with a carbon tax. Those initiatives alone are going to have a very real impact on the confidence levels of Australian households, but in particular they will have a devastating impact on Australian manufacturers, who are already struggling to compete with offshore players who have a massive currency advantage. The fact of the matter is that the Australian dollar is incredibly strong against the US dollar and many of the Asian countries that have strong manufacturing bases competing against Australian manufacturers have their currencies tied to the US dollar, and therefore their currencies have come down as well, which means that they have a competitive advantage against Australian manufacturers.

So, at a point in time when Australian manufacturers are being hit with the impact of a high Australian dollar, at a point where Australian manufacturers are struggling to deal with some of the capacity challenges that the government identified in last year's budget but did nothing about and at a time when Australian manufacturers are asking themselves whether it is time to move their operations offshore, what does this government do? It introduces a carbon tax that makes everything manufacturers produce here in Australia more expensive. That is the logic of the Labor Party's economic policy—to make life harder, not easier, for manufacturers, for Australian households and for so many of the people who are already being left behind by the mining boom. This economy is being left in the hands of incompetent amateurs. It is time to get the mature people back in charge. It is time to have an election on the carbon tax.

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