Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

What a pathetic performance that was from the Leader of the House. He has no record to defend and no government performance to speak about, so he resorted to personal insults and then stormed out of the parliament. I am going to be more gracious: I am going to recognise the superhero efforts of Australia's Treasurer. He managed to spend the nation's savings faster than a speeding bullet—the Treasurer's 'wreckonomics' are truly something to behold. He inherited a surplus, and he turned it into a deficit. We used to earn interest; now we pay interest. The man who effected these changes is the man we are honouring today. He achieved so little for our country that he is leaving behind a legacy of debt that generations will be required to repay.

Who has awarded the Treasurer the title of Finance Minister of the Year? It was given to him by Euromoney magazine. One would wonder, with the state of the European economy, how the Europeans could presume to give advice to anyone in the rest of the world. With the European economy at the point of collapse—it is teetering on the edge—and with models of economic virtue such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal to use as examples, Euromoney magazine has decided that it is going to give out awards elsewhere around the world. You have heard from previous speakers the list of some of the Treasurers who have received this award in the past.

I will note some of the other awards that that Euromoney has handed out. For instance, in 2005, the award for the best investment house went to—wait for it—Lehman Brothers. In 2006, the awards for best investment house and best risk management in North America—that is, the US and Canada—went to Bear Stearns. So what kind of judge is Euromoney magazine? What does it know about these sorts of things? What is the record of the kinds of people it has recognised in the past? The reality is that our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has got the gong, but the people are going to have to pay the bill.

Today, I will suggest a few other awards that I could give to our Treasurer for his performance over recent times. The first is 'the world's greatest spender'. The Treasurer managed to take a surplus budget and turn it into a deficit. The 'world's greatest Treasurer' has not produced a single surplus budget the whole time he has been in office. He inherited a surplus, but he soon threw it away—he squandered this legacy. What has he spent it on? The pink batts, the overpriced school halls and the millions of press releases—all talk and no action. We have just listened to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport talking about all he has achieved in the area of transport. But, although there have been a million press releases and he has announced the same project a dozen times, when you look around there are no new roads and no new ports. They are not there; they are just figments of his imagination. There is no Melbourne-to-Brisbane railway line and there are no nation-building projects—they just have not happened. In this area. This government has been all talk and no action—a spin machine—just as they have been in every other area. They are world-record holders at the spin machine, but they do not actually achieve anything.

I have a second award for our Treasurer: 'the world's greatest taxer'. There have been at least 19 new or increased taxes since he has been in office. It is an appalling list, and it covers almost everything in our lives. The list includes the alcopops tax, the changes to the employee share schemes, the new mining tax and an excise on LPG, which is an extraordinary new tax from a government that tries to parade its green credentials. It also includes the flood tax, the phasing out of the dependent spouse tax rebate, the deferral of the tax breaks for green buildings and the increases that have been announced just recently for the lowest tax rates, which will increase from 15 per cent to 19 per cent and from 30 per cent to 33 per cent. The government is selling those as tax cuts, if you please; yet they have raised these two tax rates, one or the other of which the majority of Australians pay. On top of all that, there is the horror of the big new carbon tax. The Treasurer has been the greatest taxer of all times, and he deserves the award of 'the world's greatest taxer'.

There is a third award that we might give to our Treasurer: 'the world's greatest wrecker'. Through his 'wreckonomics', he has closed many shops and caused many bankruptcies. There is also less manufacturing than there was. The Treasurer's economic policy has distributed despair across the country. Just recently I read in the Australian of a local businessman from Central Queensland, Kym Mobbs, who is closing his family hardware-manufacturing business after two generations. He is one of the small people. There are also the big people, such as OneSteel, who are deserting this country because they have been driven overseas by the economic policies of this government and 'the world's greatest wrecker'. There is less optimism and hope in this country than there was when this Treasurer came to office—fewer people believe they can make a success of their lives, and, of course, unemployment is on the way up. If I may refer to a local example, in my own electorate of Wide Bay, when the previous government left office the unemployment rate was 3.4 per cent, below the national average. We had worked hard over a long period of time to build the economy in areas where incomes and the participation rate are traditionally lower than in other parts of Australia. But we had the unemployment rate down to 3.4 per cent. Today, under this 'world's greatest wrecker', our unemployment rate is 12.7 per cent.

That is a disgrace, and the Treasurer does not even care. He is not prepared to do anything about it.

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

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