Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, Your Honour! If you listened to the shadow Treasurer's speech or read it later, you will know that what he is doing is belling the cat in terms of what the coalition's program is—what the opposition plan on doing to this economy if they get into government. The reality of this MPI, 'the urgent need for the government to address the cost-of-living pressures on Australian families', is a complete distraction. It is a distraction from their own failures, from the $70 billion black hole in what they have promised to fund. On one hand, they are saying they are going to provide more; on the other hand, they are saying they are going to make savings. If you add the two together, it makes for a very big funding black hole, and that is exactly what they have got.

The MPI also highlights the fact that the opposition are in popularity mode: 'What's out there? What group can we please? What group will just side with us, on the basis that we'll promise to do or say anything to garner a few votes?' Unfortunately, that is not how you run an economy and it is not how you run a country, and it should not be how you run a political party either. Their strategy right now is just to frighten people—families, small business, everyone they can find. They particularly want to frighten schoolkids. Their latest rant and rave is about cutting, slashing and burning funding for schools as well.

But if we need to be serious about cost-of-living pressures, if there is an 'urgent need' for government to address those issues, then let's talk about that. Let's talk about the government's record. What has this Gillard government done? It has done quite a lot, actually. Sometimes it is easy to forget just how much you have put into an area and how difficult it was to do so in tough economic times—unlike in the glory days, when the opposition were in government for nearly 12 long years, when the 'rivers of gold' used to run into Canberra. Revenue was so large, so indiscriminate, they could not spend it all. They had trouble even estimating how much the surplus would be because they did not have a clue. No matter how hard they tried to spend, no matter how much they raised taxes—the highest taxing government in Australian history—there was always plenty of spare money because we had a very strong economy.

But, in these much more difficult times, we also have a strong economy because we are doing the heavy lifting, the hard work, the hard yards, and making the tough decisions—not always the popular decisions but the right decisions, the decisions that are required to run this country properly, to ensure this economy continues to provide jobs and keeps the numbers strong. And no-one can question the numbers. This is the fallacy coming from those on the other side. They talk about the economy as though we were Spain or some other country where there are in fact some very disturbing numbers related to where their economy is going. Instead, in Australia we see an economy that is running with inflation well under control, with interest rates at the lowest they have been in a very long time, with the total government tax take lower than it has been in 20 years and with unemployment at around five per cent. In my state of Queensland, we also have a really strong economy, with $500 billion worth of projects in the pipeline, about $150 billion of which are well advanced. These are advanced projects.

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