Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I did not pay for the book; I googled it, Member for Cowper, and found it on Google. The subject of that book and the title of that book, Disconnected, is exactly what I am afraid the member for Fraser is with this MPI, which is about:

The Government's attempt to confect a Budget emergency to justify the harsh measures in the Commission of Audit report.

He knows that the Commission of Audit is a report for government, not a report by government. And he knows, being an economist and having spent the last three years in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, the absolute fiscal emergency that we have been placed in by that government, of which he was a member.

When they came back to office in 2007, Labor inherited a surplus of $20 billion with no net debt and $45 billion in the bank. It was a good position, but between 2008-09 and 2012-13 Labor delivered deficits totalling $191 billion. Despite all this, not that long ago I heard the member for Fraser say that had things been left to go unchecked by our side—by our government—we would be back in surplus by the year 2016-17. He made that point. How disconnected is the member for Fraser? How disconnected is he from the state of the economy? He knows that Labor left additional projected deficits of $123 billion over the next four years—2013-14 to 2016-17—when he claimed that we would be getting back into surplus. Over six budgets, Labor increased spending by more than 50 per cent—$137,000 million. The International Monetary Fund, as the member for Moncrieff quite correctly pointed out, recently found that Australia's spending is projected to grow faster than any of the 17 advanced economies it profiled.

Labor's waste and mismanagement knew no bounds—a cost blow-out of at least $29 billion with the National Broadband Network. How much would it have cost? Seventy-four billion dollars? Who would know? There was a blow-out of more than $11 billion in border protection costs. When Labor inherited office under Mr Rudd, there were just four adult males in detention centres in Australia. When we regained control of government, 55,000 men, women and children had unfortunately come to these shores in 800 boats, costing more than $11½ billion. That is straight off the bottom line of this country.

There was a $6 billion to $8 billion blow-out in the cost of overpriced school halls. Admittedly, there were some school hall projects in my electorate which have proven to be very good, but they were managed by the independent schools. The ones for the public schools were absolutely ripped off, and public school teachers tell me this. Every time I visit a public school, they point to how they were not allowed to manage their own project and what they could have possibly done with the money had they been able to do so. Stimulus cheques of $900 were sent to around 27,000 Australians living overseas and 21,000 people who had died.

Treasury projects that without policy change the budget would have been in deficit for the next decade. This would mean 16 unbroken years of deficits unless brought under control by the Liberal-National coalition, which is what we are doing, and it starts tonight. The adults are back in charge. As Tony Abbott, the now Prime Minister, promised prior to the election, we would get the economy back on track and the absolute confidence of the people to do that. People have been ringing and telling us, 'Don't squib it.' They want us to get in and make the hard decisions on behalf of the people and on behalf of the taxpayers of this nation, who deserve better. They deserved better over the last six years; they did not get it, but they will certainly get it under the Abbott-Truss Liberal-National government.

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