Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has got to a situation where our country is at the crossroads. With $1 billion worth of interest having to be paid every month, each and every Australian owes nearly $25,000 to get our debt back to zero. It is time we turned this country around. If we do not take that step now, our kids will suffer. We have just blown the biggest mining boom of the last decade and have nothing to show for it. That is a disgrace.

During the global financial crisis, Labor compared us with Greece, Italy, Ireland and those European countries; they did not even look at Asia, which was quietly going about its business. The growth rate in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and China was seven, 7½ or eight per cent and Korea was going along just fine. But we wanted to compare ourselves with Greece and talk of how much better than Greece we were travelling. They inherited a surplus back in 2007 and we inherited a great debt of some $300 billion at the start of our term in 2013. During those six years, Labor went on a high-spending spree. There were school halls, pink batts, $900 cheques and an NBN with no plan and no funding. The NDIS was talked about and agreed to but not funded. It was the same with Gonski. We saw a growth in public servants of 23,000 in Canberra alone. This has all taken its toll. We have a record deficit, locked in at $123 billion. We have not seen a positive budget from Labor since 1987 and it is all catching up on us. Gross debt has jumped from $75 billion to over $300 billion and continues to climb. If we do not do anything about it, it will gobble us up. The gross debt for the next 10 years if we do not make changes is forecast to be $667 billion.

I would like to quote an independent budget adviser, who says that he has rejected Labor and the Greens' claim that the Abbott government has concocted a budget crisis, saying that without action Australia's debt will grow at one of the fastest rates in the developed world. In remarks that effectively endorse government warnings that if left unchecked, gross debt would balloon to $667 billion, Parliamentary Budget Officer Phil Bowen said it was time to begin the return to surplus to protect the economy against future crises. 'It is time to start coming out of debt and deficit, otherwise the longer you leave it the more exposed you become and the harder it is to wind it back.' That is what he told The Australian Financial Review. Personally, I have never seen so much government debt in my life, whether it be federal government, state government or local government. In fact, government debt has never been so high. Labor turned gold into mud. There is no doubt about that.

During their reign, unemployment jumped by 200,000 and 50,000 illegal immigrants came in on boats. Labor say debt is not a problem. I do not get that at all, when we have one of the fastest growing debts in the OECD countries. Our election promises to the Australian people are quite simple, and revolve around four main points. The first is to get rid of the carbon and mining taxes. The second is to stop the boats—and I am pleased to say that Minister Scott Morrison has stopped the boats. There has not been one here now for maybe 150 days. We have given up counting, but it could be longer. That was costing the nation a lot of money. With the displacement of people, we encouraged people smugglers. What sort of a system was that? The boats could not be stopped by Labor, but Scott Morrison has stopped them. The third of our promises was to build infrastructure for the future. That is infrastructure that will return money to the coffers, to the people and to businesses and, of course, provide jobs for our workers. The final promise was to repair the budget, which we want to do but we are running into a lot of hurdles there.

My primary focus is to look after my electorate, which covers big and small industry, small business, retailers, all primary producers, resource companies and fishing and forestry. They all exist in my electorate. By fixing the budget, we fix jobs. We fix business profitability, we build infrastructure for the next century and we enhance R&D in our regions. The 1.5 per cent tax relief for small businesses will go a long way to restoring some confidence in business and them employing more people. I am pleased to say that the fuel rebate has been maintained. As the excise on fuel goes up, the rebate goes up accordingly. So the people who do not use the roads but use diesel fuel on properties and those in the fishing and forestry industries will not be disadvantaged.

The budget is fair and responsible and most sectors have had to take a hit. You cannot improve a budget unless everyone across the board takes a hit. We are investing $50 billion in transport infrastructure over a seven-year period. There is an $11.6 billion infrastructure growth package and $6.7 billion to fix the Bruce Highway over a 10-year period. When you put that with the state government contribution, it is a very worthy figure and it will enhance the Bruce Highway—the condition of which, as some people say, is of a 1990s standard. It also includes measures to ensure safer travel conditions on our internal roads and all black spots will be looked at.

We will improve the transport corridors. There are a lot of bridges in our area that do not have the weight limits. Consequently, where we do have the roads to a standard we have not got the wooden bridges up to a good weight limit.

We are building our mobile phone service. We will spend $100 million in rural areas. Our towns and cities in the main have a good mobile service but many country areas are suffering. We have a program to fix that. After Minister Turnbull sorted out the NBN and put on the board people who could actually understand what the problems with the NBN were we got it up and running.

We intend to upgrade our ports. There are three ports in my area, Gladstone, Port Alma and Bundaberg. Money will be spent on those ports to enhance what they can export. I would like to see Gladstone, Port Alma or Bundaberg get involved in more grain exports, boxed meats and live cattle.

We have two free trade agreements signed up in Asia, with Korea and Japan. Our trade minister, Andrew Robb, has done a great job there. He has more work to do on China, but hopefully by the end of this year we will have an agreement signed with China. A free trade agreement has worked wonders for New Zealand, especially in dairy and beef products. We can only think that, eventually, it will be a good future for our agricultural businesses, which are very prominent in Flynn. We would like to fully restore the Indonesian trade in live cattle. Everyone, including the Indonesians, took a hit when the Labor government stopped the live trade to Indonesia. It put the villagers of Indonesia in turmoil. It put our own industry in turmoil. It wrecked cattle prices down the east coast of Australia. When the drought came graziers could not get rid of their cattle and the hardship suffered by our beef industry is still prominent today. It sent many graziers to the wall. They were unable to move their cattle to market when they normally would have, which would have avoided the big drought. A lot of Queensland—I think 80 per cent—is still drought.

In conclusion, the debt trajectory is one of the worst in the developed world. It is simply unsustainable. It must be turned around. The budget must be allowed to pass. In this budget the coalition government is making modest changes to ensure that Australia does not become a basket case down the track. Labor's alternative is no alternative. It is simply trying to stop the government fixing the mess that it created. Unless the government is allowed to make changes to turn it around the debt will become virtually insurmountable. Future governments will be forced to bring in drastic austerity measures to bring debt under control. Tough decisions have to be made and, once again, it has been left to the coalition to make them. The coalition government is committed to cutting red tape, building infrastructure and repairing the economy. Labor should get out of the way and let us fix their mess.

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