Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Well, let me talk about pink batts. There is nothing wrong—it is still acknowledged that the best single most cost-effective method to save money on electricity bills is to insulate your home. That is still the case today, and it has always been the case. Good insulation helps you to reduce your costs in summer and in winter. This government went out there, and the majority of people who took up that great benefit were older people. Older people understood that because in one way they do not necessarily have revenue coming in. Older people actually took up this opportunity because it was good for their bottom line.

We invested in universities. Since we got to government there has been an incredible increase in university investment. There is less personal debt. People are paying off their credit cards and actually keeping their equity. And about time! What we were seeing in the hedonistic years, right through the Howard years, was that people actually went a little bit too far in some of the borrowings. We saw all sorts of problems, and when the GFC hit we saw the damage it did. So I am all for people keeping more of their equity, reducing their credit card debt and increasing their savings, because that is a good thing. This is unlike the members opposite in the Liberal Party.

Government took on the difficult decisions. It took on more debt to ensure that we have a strong and resilient economy and make sure that if anyone is going to cop the burden of debt and the political cost that it would be us. Let it be us! Let it be us who stand up for the ordinary people in the street who cannot bear that burden. They have less of a burden, as was said just before: they are saving more. True—less of a burden. They are actually paying off their houses: absolutely they are—less of a burden. Do they owe less on their mortgages? Yes—less of a burden. This government has made sure that we will cop the blame and we will cop the burden, but ordinary people—householders and mortgage holders—are the ones who are actually getting the benefit.

That is why I say the 'real economy'. Let us have a look at what is actually happening in the real economy and with real people. I will go to the comments of the member for Casey, because he was right: they are saving more. Good on them! And they ought to. They are paying off their credit cards more. Good on them! They ought to keep doing that. And if the banks complain because they are not getting as much revenue from that, then bad luck for them.

So there is plenty of good news. The fact is that our economy has grown 14 per cent—14 per cent!—since we came to government. Compare that to any other economy. Pick any other economy and compare ours. Those other economies shrank. That means they lost jobs.

Importantly, there is one other thing that I want to raise in talking about the real economy, real people and what is actually happening out on the ground, and that is that you have to look beyond where we are today. Where will we be in 20 years time? You have to look not just at this budget or the next, or at the fact that these guys promised there would be a budget surplus in their first year and every year after that and then walked away from it. They are not going to manage it any better than anyone else because they will still have the same issues, the same global economy and the same write-downs in revenue.

But we are determined to continue growth, jobs and productivity, and there is only one way you can do that: to invest through innovation. That is why this government has taken the bold step of putting together 10 innovation precincts. I am very hopeful one of them is close to my electorate, but that is not going to matter because those innovation precincts are the way we get to productivity, growth and jobs—the high-paying jobs that Australians expect and the standard of living that we have got used to in this country. If we do not achieve that in the future then our standard of living will fall. It will not fall because of a budget deficit. It will fall because our productivity and innovative capacity fails us and our competitors are running faster than we are. If we are to exploit the intelligence that exists in this country it will be through innovation and productivity. We have understood that. The Liberal Party have no idea what I am talking about.

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