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

This government's claims to wearing a fiscal straitjacket are a dangerous myth. The record shows nonstop profligacy, record debt and deficit and an unprecedented level of waste. Let us for a minute look at the last budget of the Howard and Costello government in 2007-08, a government that set a gold standard. We see the estimates for what a prudent government should be spending between that year and through to 2010-11. These forecasts were completed by the Treasury. These figures are a symbol of the reckless fiscal policy we have seen under the Rudd-Gillard government, notwithstanding the need for some stimulus in 2008-09.

A table of these forecasts from 2007-08 to 2010-11 shows that each year of the four years to 2010-11 the government exceeded forecast payments by between $40 billion and $80 billion. In fact, in the last three years, this government has a black hole in excess of $70 billion each year funded inevitably by debt and higher taxes. To put that into context, the table shows these payments average nearly four per cent of GDP each year. Looking two to three years ahead with this government is totally problematic. It never fails to grossly overspend. The budget for 2007-08 involved payments totalling $271 billion, yet last November the government said in 2011-12 it would make payments of $370 billion, an increase of virtually $100 billion or 36 per cent in just four years. That is why we have a structural budget deficit double that of Germany, on a percentage of GDP basis, and 30 per cent worse than that of Italy. It is why no new net jobs were created in the last year—for the first time in 20 years—and it is why we have a real vulnerability if commodity prices fall. That is why there is a crisis of confidence pervading our community.

This government totally lacks direction. People feel no sense of where this country is going and the government totally lacks confidence in the execution of programs, particularly staying within a budget. I seek leave to table a document which shows this forecast.

Leave not granted.

Mr Husic interjecting—

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