George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You think it would not get any worse than that, as the member for Herbert said, but now somehow the most recent budget update puts it at $37 billion. Is it even possible that anyone in the world—the world's greatest Treasurer, for instance—could be that incompetent with a budget forecast? Maybe not, because the 2011-12 year is another write-off for this Labor government and another write-off for this nation. It is another Labor deficit to add to the collection. If you are going to stuff it up in the great old Labor tradition, you might as well go all the way; you might as will push as many costs under that rug as you can. You might as well take some costs out of future budget deficits and stick them under the rug too.

What we have is a smoke and mirrors situation going on in this government in a desperate bid to produce a budget surplus, just one. We are hoping you can get it, guys, just one. For the benefit of those of us who have never seen a Labor surplus in our lifetime, such as the member for Longman on this side, let us see if you can get it or at least get another rug to cover up what will turn out to be another deficit for as long as it takes to get to an election.

While the government is trying to manufacture their first surplus, we have minister after minister come into this place to justify their economy-destroying policies, the ones we were told would not happen—there will be no carbon tax under this rug. The carbon tax cannot be hidden any longer. We have seen the Labor Party and the Greens constructing this elaborate new paradigm that is supposed to stop a tax from being a tax. They try to justify the carbon tax with the illusion that there will be this wealth of green jobs. So where are these green jobs? Ask Spain how they are going to get all their green jobs and how they are going with that. Go down to Immigration and ask them, because that is where they are—all the young unemployed are coming to Australia because the whole green job thing did not quite work out for them.

In addition to the green jobs furphy, the government have tried to invent this new economy. That is because they stuffed up the old one. You can only talk about a new economy for so long because eventually people stop and realise, 'Hang on, this is just the old economy except there are fewer jobs and we are worse off.' The government try to dress up their carbon tax as the clean energy future, but what business really wants is for government to be the ones who come clean—to tell the truth. Business wants to know where they truly stand, not where the government can make people think they stand. And if they are going to come clean on the carbon tax they should do the same with the mining tax. Let us not try to justify this bad tax by selling it as something that it is not. The government cannot keep saying to businesses that they are spreading the wealth around to every postcode, in that dull voice that the Treasurer says it in. Giving a one per cent tax cut to companies is not spreading the wealth around; it is only giving a little break to companies. The government might be able to con a lot of the people like that but not small businesses.

Most businesses are small and it is small businesses that are more likely than not—70 per cent of them, in fact—to be sole traders or partnerships, not companies. They will not be the beneficiaries of this spreading of the wealth, but they will be the ones paying the extra three per cent in superannuation that the government desperately is trying to say it is doing. What a disgrace and what an affront to businesses around this nation for the government to say that it is the one creating the super when it is actually businesses doing it. That is not spreading wealth, it is increasing the burden even more. It should not try and justify the mining tax by telling us that it is going to fund things that it is clearly not going to fund. As a bit of a segue here, it is incredible that we had the Leader of the House give this statement today. He is now the minister for urban rorts: snout-in-the-trough Albanese rorting roads funding right into his own electorate. But we had the Leader of the House—

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