Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to join my colleagues the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister to speak on this urgent matter of public importance: the urgent need for the government to release the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook for parliamentary scrutiny. Why do they need to release it? Because they need to hold themselves to the high standards that they say they have set. Who can forget that it was this Prime Minister who said she would lead an open and transparent government. She reiterated the words of the member for Lyne, who said that this was going to be a government that would 'open the curtains and let the sun shine in'. This is supposed to be an open and transparent government. You would think that the government would be rushing to provide, for parliamentary scrutiny, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, yet we hear from the other side a reluctance to do this—a reluctance to release their mini-budget, their crisis update.

You have to think about why it would be reluctant. You only need to look at the fact that this government has been guilty of reckless spending. Julia Gillard promised, when she made her statement on 28 July, that she would always examine expenditure proposals. She said she would 'examine them rigorously, hold them up to the light, ask every question and require every answer to get to the bottom of what we need to know, the central thing—whether they are affordable'.

This is a reckless-spending government. Australia used to be ranked as a fast-growing economy with large surpluses and no net debt. It was ranked at the top of G20 economies. Yet, since 2007, Australia has had the third highest increase in real public debt. We have increased debt by more than 150 per cent. The only countries that have had a larger increase are Iceland and Ireland. We rank worse than Spain, Greece and Portugal. If this government were a pack of cards, then Wayne Swan would be the joker of deficits. Unlike Peter Costello, who is the king of surpluses, he would be the joker of deficits. In each of the budgets, and there have been four, he has delivered four deficits. He is nought for four. There is not one surplus in all of those budgets. When you add up each of those deficits there is a combined deficit of over $150 billion.

This is not the position that this government started in. This government had the great benefit of inheriting a very strong financial position. The former Treasurer had paid off the previous, Labor government's $96 billion of net debt. The former Treasurer had delivered a $20 billion surplus. Well, the last two budgets have delivered a $49 billion deficit and a $23 billion deficit. Of course, this government is addicted to reckless spending, so much so that it has had to increase the gross debt ceiling from $75 billion to $200 billion, and then up again from $200 billion to $250 billion. If Wayne Swan were in a business, he would probably be sacked at this point. We are also experiencing, right now, the highest terms of trade in our nation's history. We are getting our highest levels of revenue and, if you make it analogous to a business, we are still not posting a profit. He would be sacked. It is lucky, of course, that he works for the Labor Party, and his job is absolutely secure as long as he keeps the Assistant Treasurer onside, because we all know that when you get the Assistant Treasurer offside you can in fact lose your job, as the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd found out all too harshly.

We know that the Treasurer has a problem with deficits and we know that he has a problem, sometimes, remembering when the Labor Party last delivered a surplus. He very famously earlier this year could not remember the time that the Labor Party last delivered a surplus and he went on to break a glass in the intense thinking as to when that was. It was in 1989-90 under the Hawke-Keating government, before the current member for Longman was even born. I believe at that particular point in time the Treasurer was a member of the AWU when he joined as, I understand, a sewerage worker. Well, when he was a sewerage worker, he was no doubt knee-deep in it, and he is knee-deep in it now.

It would take nearly 50 years of Labor's long awaited, much anticipated, much promised 2012-13 forecasted surplus just to pay off the past four years of Labor's deficits. By contrast, the coalition does not have a problem with deficits. In fact we have a pretty good record of delivering surpluses, which we did in government, delivering 10 out of 12 surpluses over our 12 years in government. This government is going to continue to spend and, as a result of that, it will continue to tax.

You need to look back at the record of the current government. In 2008-08 the Labor government increased expenditure by a record 12.7 per cent. Just to give that some context, the coalition, over its term in government, averaged a 3.3 per cent increase in nominal terms in expenditure per annum. Wayne Swan as Treasurer spent four years worth of average coalition expenditure in just one year. Is it any wonder that they need to introduce a record number of new and increased taxes? It is no wonder that the government have the very unenviable record of introducing or increasing 19 new taxes. That is what we see with the introduction of the mining tax, which will probably be passed this week. We also see it with the carbon tax. The government were in such a poor fiscal position that they said they needed to introduce a flood tax to deal with the terrible floods in Queensland, which would normally be dealt with in the ordinary course of events, which would not require a prudent government to impose any tax.

We hear from the Treasurer that he promises that he will deliver a surplus, although he has been promising this now for the past four years. He said, 'We can bank on it, we can lock it in.' He said, 'It is absolutely guaranteed.' But, since his original statements, we have heard the weasel words creep in. We have heard that he is now simply 'committed' to delivering a surplus, he is 'working towards' delivering a surplus. And thinking back to President Obama's visit just last week, we can hear the little plaintive cry of 'Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can deliver a surplus. I promise we can. We can'. That is what he says to himself late at night, but today in the House we hear the latest in his litany of excuses, which are well-worn over four deficits.

I regret to say—in fact in the words of President Obama—'This is unfortunately not change that we can believe in.' We cannot believe in this change. It is something this government has promised, it is something this government has failed to deliver. We, by contrast, will be a government that can live within its means, because we have done it in the past and we can do it again. When we talk about economic reform, we mean it. We do not simply mean economic reform, read new taxes. This government is a reckless spender. This government believes in tax grabs. This government is fiscally incompetent.

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