Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Hansard source

When truth prevails over injustice, we are all the winners. Last week in Australia, the truth prevailed over injustice and the Australian people were the winners and the government was a loser in the court of public opinion. Australia's debt is around 12 per cent of GDP, according to the OECD, and the average debt for the OECD is 73 per cent. The IMF confirms this position. Australia's debt is 12 per cent of GDP and the average in the OECD is 73 per cent. So while Australia is only one of 13 countries in the world with a AAA credit rating—the best rating in the world—and one of the lowest debt levels in the world, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister tell all Australians that we have a debt problem.

Why do they tell such untruths to the whole country? No member of parliament should vote for any appropriation bill for a government that lies to Australians and does so for an improper purpose. It seems the Liberal Party wants to fool Australians and grab their money and grab control of their lives. How can an appropriation bill for any purpose be believed? How can we have faith in appropriating one cent to a government that has misled the Australian people over our debt levels? The Treasurer and the Prime Minister seek to destroy Australia's standard of living. Every Australian in and out of parliament must hold the government to account. These bills stem from the Treasurer's betrayal of the election promises made by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in the election campaign, after the campaign was called. While the Prime Minister was very quick to attack former Prime Minister Julia Gillard for breaking promises, these bills break many, many promises and together with the appropriation bills for the budget and the accompanying legislation will destroy the livelihood of millions of Australians. Now is the time for the nation to unite and make it clear to the government that these changes to our lives will not stand. As a great man once said, 'An injustice done to a man anywhere is an injustice to all men everywhere.'

Four female members of my electorate contacted me last week. They are aged between 73 and 86. They are living in a nursing home and for the last 50 years they have voted for the Liberal Party. They informed me that they did not vote for me at the last federal election, that they had always voted Liberal. They reminded me what a great Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was, how important the work that Malcolm Fraser had done was for Australia and what a great friend John Howard had been to the elderly people of Australia. Every payday, they handover their pension to the nursing home that looks after them and the home gives them back $15 a week. It is enough for them to pool their money every Friday, so that they can catch a taxi and based on their concessions go and see a movie. Sometimes a relative will give them some additional funds and they can buy a chocolate or have a coffee. That is their life, but not anymore since the budget was brought down. They have done nothing but worry that that $15 will have to be kept for maybe a visit to the doctor or maybe two at their age.

Fifty years of voting Liberal means nothing. Their lives are shattered, their lifestyle diminished. They informed me, like many Australians have, they will never vote for the Liberal or National parties again. Why be elected to parliament if you are going to make pensioners suffer and cause misery to so many people? No senator of the Palmer United Party will vote for any change to the pension or the co-payment imposed by the Treasurer, the Prime Minister or Minister for Health in this budget. Trying to reduce the rate of increase in the pension is a cut to the pension, a breach of another election promise. The Prime Minister is talking semantics and, yet again, trying to mislead the parliament.

To extend the eligibility for pensions to the age of 70 years is not just an extension to the age of the pension. It is more than that; it is an attempt to set up conditions to extend the entitlement date for super to 70 years, so that fund managers of Australia will be able to earn fees over 50 years from the savings of average Australians. Thirty per cent of all Australians who may die before they reach the age of 70 will never receive their super and never receive access to their life savings before they die. Imagine working as a tradesman or a labourer and having to retire at the age of 50 because you are worn out, and you need to get access to your super but you will not get the pension or your super until you are 70 because the fund managers have it. They have your life savings. They have the sum total of your work as a tradesman because they want to earn excessive fees out of it every year. If the fund managers want to sell their businesses, the value of that business increases dramatically if the entitlement age for Australians receiving their super is, as has been foreshadowed by the government, extended to 70 years of age. That is what it is about: selling their business, making money on the quick at the cost of the people of Australia.

The cost of 12 years education is equivalent to the cost of one year's unemployment to our nation. A good education policy is not only good social policy but good economic policy. We rob the nation of the creativity and the excellence of its most promising citizens if we load them up as soon as they leave university with mountains of debt to handicap them or to inhibit their choice in careers. When you are 20, 22 or 30, it is the time of your life to take risks and to be bold. The history of the world tells us that it is the young, the cream of the nation, who create the need and the leadership for incentivising the nation to do better. It was a young Thomas Jefferson aged 30 years who wrote in the US Constitution that all men are created equal. Silicon Valley in the United States stands as a testimony as to what can be done and what has been done by so many young Americans. They gave the world Facebook, Yahoo and Google. None of these leaders of the world's industry were saddled with HECS debt. They were free to pursue their lives and their dreams in their 20s at a time when life was as it was meant to be: free and independent. They were free to provide real leadership.

The cost of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme will be nearly $20 billion and still a stay at home mum with four children will not receive anything and still a mother in part-time employment juggling two roles will get a pittance. The cost of a free university education in Australia is around $12 billion a year. I think freeing the best among us is more important than creating a scheme designed to make well-off women in our society more well-off by burdening our youth, senior citizens and those who cannot fend for themselves.

When I left school I registered for unemployment at the age of 18. I did not know what I wanted to do in my life. Sometimes I was depressed. Sometimes I felt a failure. I tried a number of times but could not find employment. After a few months I got myself together. Since that time I or my companies have paid millions of dollars in tax to the government, employed thousands of people, and invested in the nation through billions of dollars in investment and exports. The small investment I received from the Australian government when I first left school was paid back many times over.

Australia cannot abandon its young citizens. The whole move to deny government assistance to one group of citizens because of their age would, if implemented, increase the crime rate and youth suicide. All Australians—whatever party they belong to—must stop moves by the government to destroy the lives of Australians before they start on their journey in life. Palmer United will vote in the Senate against any attempt to make any citizen ineligible for government assistance on the basis of their age.

Queensland and Western Australia are vast states. The use of motor transport in those states is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Australians living in these states, especially in the bush, more than any other state, will suffer from the increase in fuel excise. The government fails; Australians pay. Palmer United will join with our colleagues in the Senate from the Motoring Enthusiast Party to vote against changes to the fuel excise. The most disturbing feature of this measure is, however, the fact that increases are indexed. This means every year, regardless of the state of the economy, regardless of the state of the debt of Australia and the states, the excise will increase—regardless, they will pay more. This indexation will avoid political and public notice, but it will mean that millions of Australians will pay more each year without any announcement in any budget, without any political responsibility.

As the OECD tells us, confirmed by the Australian Parliamentary Library, Australia's debt is 12 per cent of its GDP, and the average debt for the advanced economies is 73 per cent. So for the Treasurer to say that we have a debt problem is just untrue. It is not one promise that has been broken by the Liberal government; it is many. The government is seeking to change our way of life as Australians, to scare us so that they will destroy us out of fear.

If I told untruths as a director of a company to my shareholders and raised money for them or got elected to a board position on false representations, I would be charged with deceptive and misleading conduct. So it must be with the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and all the ministers that serve in the government. To seek to impose a new tax in the form of a debt levy, when our debt is not a problem based on its national standards, goes against every Liberal policy, from the day of the foundation of the Liberal Party, and is a betrayal of not only all members of the Liberal Party but all members of the community. The Liberal Party has always been a party that sought to reduce taxation. How can a Liberal government betray their members by imposing a so-called debt levy? The government is trying to create a false impression that there is a debt problem when there is not. Australia's public social expenditure is less than half of the average of the OECD. Now, more than ever, we need to unite all Australians and oppose this sham budget, make it an election budget for the government and allow the people to vote on it. That is what democracy is all about.

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