Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It appears there has been something of a competition going on in the cabinet this week: who can conduct the biggest backflip? Who can create the biggest gap between pre-election rhetoric and post-election reality? It has been quite a competition. You would think, wouldn't you, Madam Speaker, that the Minister for Education had it all sewn up with his clear cast-iron commitments before the election and his backflip of this week—the Pyne gap of difference between his pre-election promise and his post-election reality. But the Treasurer is a competitive man. He is not going to be bullied out of the prize of the biggest backflip from pre-election rhetoric to post-election reality. This is a Treasurer who railed against debt before the election, who voted against increases in the debt cap, despite their denials in this place and the other place, and who told the Australian people that one of their three great priorities was to pay back the debt. What he did not tell the Australian people is that, to pay back the debt, he is going to increase it first.

Did the people of Australia, when they voted on 7 September, really think they were voting for a Liberal government that would go into an alliance with the Greens to abolish the debt cap? Is that what they thought they were getting on 7 September? We saw the Treasurer with equal measures of chutzpah and hypocrisy say, casually, that he was going to increase the debt cap by 67 per cent, a $200 billion increase. That was bad enough. That came as a great shock to Liberal voters across the country who voted for a party that said they would pay back the debt. But they are going even further; they are voting with the Greens to abolish the debt cap. The Minister for Immigration very helpfully showed us yesterday who the leader of the Greens is. Here is a picture of the Leader of the Greens, whom the Treasurer is doing a deal with to abolish the debt cap in Australia. Is that what Liberal supporters voted for on 7 September? Is that what the Australian people voted for on 7 September?

We hear a lot of rhetoric from the government about debt. Let us see what they said when they were in opposition. We have heard a lot from the Prime Minister. There is a lot to choose from, but my favourite one is when Tony Abbott, the then Leader of the Opposition, said on 2UE on 13 May 2011:

A Government which is supposedly getting debt and deficit under control is not a Government that suddenly wants to borrow an extra $50 billion. It’s like saying to your bank manager ‘look mate I’ve got my spending under control, oh but at the same time can you extend my credit card limit’. I mean, really.

Indeed! This man is now the Prime Minister. He says he is paying off the debt. But he does not want an increase in the credit card limit; he has gone to his bank manager and asked, 'Why do I need a limit at all? Please get rid of my limit.' That is the Prime Minister of Australia!

Here is another doozy, from the man who is now Treasurer. He was talking about debt limits—in this House, at this dispatch box—and pointing out that the previous government had had to increase the debt limit. He had a startling revelation to make about who was voting with the government to increase the debt limit. He pointed out that the debt limit needed to be increased. He pointed out—breathlessly, I am sure, beating his chest:

They were supported by their mates, the Independents, and the Greens. The Greens would have a trillion dollars if they could.

That is what the member for North Sydney said: 'The Greens would actually have no debt limit if they could, and the government is going to give it to them!' This party that is against debt—the Liberals—is going to give the Greens a no-debt-limit budget. This is a stark example of the Liberal Party and the National Party saying one thing before the election and doing the exact opposite after the election.

The Treasurer had a course of action available to him. In fact, he had two potential courses of action available to him. He could have released the mid-year economic forecast. He says it is coming in the coming days. He could have released it before the parliament voted, because the Labor Party said: 'We're not going to do what you did and vote against the debt cap increases. We're going to move an amendment to say $400 billion is justified by the figures on the public record. If you want more than that, issue MYEFO.'

But, of course, the Treasurer did not want to do that. We could not have that! It would mean the impact of his decisions would be there for all to see: the impact of his $8.8 billion transfer to the Reserve Bank, which has increased our debt cost by $1 billion over the next four years; the impact of his decision to give a tax break to people with more than $2 million in their superannuation accounts; and the impact of his decision to water down Labor's measures to improve the integrity of the tax system. He would not want to do that. He certainly did not want to say, 'All right, what we'll do is increase the debt cap to $400 billion, which is justified by the mid-year economic statement, and when we want more, when we've released our mid-year economic forecast, we'll come back to the parliament.' He did not want to do that, because he does not want to be held responsible for the impact of his own decisions. He does not want to be held responsible for the decisions he has made.

He wants to increase the debt cap now as part of his cunning plan. He has been going around opening cupboards, he says, and finding spiders. Well, he found a cupboard with a AAA credit rating in it. He found a cupboard where the budget situation had been outlined clearly in the pre-election economic forecast, and he does not want to come clean with the Australian people about the impact of decisions he has taken since the election. So the Treasurer had a choice. He could have done the sensible thing and released MYEFO. He could have done the sensible thing and accepted a $400 billion debt cap, a $100 billion increase—not a small amount of money—that the Labor Party was offering in a spirit of mature negotiation. Oh no, that was not good enough for the Treasurer. First, he stamped his feet and held his breath and said, 'I want half a trillion or nothing.' But to either of those two options, he has gone to chat with the Greens about abolishing the debt cap, about getting rid of any credit card limit at all.

I think the Australian people would be surprised to see the Treasurer 's actions compared to his rhetoric pre-election. When I see the Treasurer, I think about all that rhetoric we heard before the election. We have heard it from the Prime Minister and we have heard it from the Treasurer. We see this pre-election rhetoric completely unmatched by their actions post-election. The Australian people are entitled to be more than disappointed; they are entitled to be angry. They are entitled to be angry with a Treasurer who said, 'If debt is the problem, more debt is not the answer.' They are entitled to be angry with a Treasurer who said, 'It's only the coalition that is going to pay back the debt.' They are entitled to be angry with a Treasurer who said so obviously, 'The age of entitlement is coming to an end because governments are running out of money and debt is now crippling governments.' This is a Treasurer who now wants to abolish the debt cap in coalition with the Greens, whom they railed against before the election, whom they railed against in this House and in the other place and whom they railed against in the media. They told the Australian people that they could never be in a government with the Greens. But here they are entering into a coalition with the Greens to abolish the debt cap. Who would have thought it?

Have we ever before seen a Treasurer, within such a short period of time—and this is the third sitting week of the new government—being such a diminished figure? He has been bullied and shown up by the Minister for Agriculture. He is not being tough enough, not showing guts enough, to stand up for growth and investment against the antigrowth faction in his own government, the agrarian socialist Barnaby Joyce. The Treasurer comes in here and beats his chest and then sits in his office and cowers: 'Oh, I couldn't sign that foreign investment. Barnaby might resign. I couldn't do that. The Deputy Prime Minister might be beastly to me. The Deputy Prime Minister might get cranky with me. So I'm not going to stand up for growth. I'm not going to go out and argue to the Australian people that investment and jobs are good. No, I'm going to cower in my office. But I can't think of an excuse! What excuse can I come up with? Oh, vetoing GrainCorp! I know what I'll do, I'll say we need more foreign investment in Australia, so I'm going to knock this one back. That's how we are going to get more foreign investment, by knocking them back.'

With this Treasurer and this Prime Minister, never has there been such a clear case of big promises and small delivery. They were, as their promises were then, once mighty. They are now, as their performance is, nothing.

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