Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to continue along the lines of what my friend the member for Ryan was just pointing to in such an eloquent fashion, and that is the record of what is quickly becoming the worst government in Australian history. Probably the worst element of the worst government in Australian history is the waste and mismanagement, leading to the massive debt and the deficit that we now see in the Australian budget. This week we have seen the Treasurer lurch from crisis to crisis on a daily basis. His house-of-cards budget is falling apart. His predictions for the revenue from his mining tax are disappearing. His carbon tax revenue is disappearing. The structural deficit that he is building into this budget for years to come is becoming more and more obvious on a daily basis.

But what has been forgotten is that it is not all the Treasurer's fault. We have to give the Treasurer some peace of mind as he gets on that plane and heads off to Moscow—and we wish him a very safe trip to and a quick return from Russia. Waste and mismanagement has been part of this government from top to bottom from day one. The government that the member for Griffith led—before it lost its way and the current Prime Minister stabbed him in the back and took over the prime ministership—presided over the worst example of waste that we have learnt of, the Home Insulation Scheme, which put pink batts in people's roofs that burnt people's houses down. That cost $2.5 billion—$1 billion to put in and $1½ billion to undo the damage.

The BER program, through which overpriced school halls were built, saw at least $1.5 billion in waste. The Computers in Schools program had a blow-out of $1.4 billion. The changes to our border protection policies saw a $6.6 billion blow-out in that program. We learnt today that the government now estimates that it will have a saving in that program in two years time, with the new minister magically waving his wand and stopping the boats and blaming the former minister, Minister Bowen, for all the boats that have arrived. We have seen the blow-out in the NBN Co. plan of $3.2 billion. There has been carbon tax advertising and a market research blow-out—you name it.

We had it all in the Little book of big Labor waste, which we released late last year. When we released that, we thought that it would be a useful guide to just how bad this Labor government has been and to its inefficiencies and its wasteful ways leading into the election. We did not think that there would be much more to put into it. We were wrong. With the events of the last few weeks, we will have to revise it in the coming weeks and put out a new edition, because we have seen more waste, more inefficiency and more examples of just how hopeless this government is at implementing programs.

I will mention a couple of examples. We learnt in estimates this week that the Teach Next scheme—which was a $16 million program announced at the last election that was designed to get professionals into teaching—has recruited only 14 of the promised 450 people. That is some $1.1 million per recruit. Then there is the NBN. We love the NBN: it is a goldmine for waste. We have seen staff treated to 31 coffee machines worth more than $164,000. I know that the staff of the Leader of the Opposition have chipped in and gone out and bought themselves a coffee machine, which shows the difference between the Liberal Party attitude to money and the Labor Party attitude to money.

But my favourite—and I am glad that the Minister Macklin is here at the table—is the schoolkids bonus advertising. We are now sending pencil cases to kids to tell them that their parents can get free money from the government. That money is borrowed, of course, but that was meant to be paid for by the mining tax and that money is now not there. They have borrowed that money to send it out 'for free'. I wonder if the minister can answer this question: is there a bill in the pencil case to tell the children how much that they will have to pay back because of the wasteful spending on this advertising by this government? Have you heard anything more absurd than sending out pencil cases, so-called schoolkids kits, that have cost the Australian taxpayer some $87,000? That shows a complete lack of respect for the money of Australian taxpayers. It typifies this government. It will be on its tombstone when it finally goes and leaves the country with a massive debt, a massive deficit and a massive example of how you should not ever run a government. It cannot go too soon. (Time expired)

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