Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on this matter of public importance put by the opposition entitled 'the hurt and division caused by the government's unfair budget and broken promises'. I have listened to the Leader of the Opposition today and I have listened to the members opposite talk about their view of the budget but I have not heard a single word about their plan to address the mess that they created. Let's not mistake the process here. It was Labor who created the economic mess that we sit in, at the moment—this cesspool of mess created by the Labor Party dumping on Australia.

The Labor Party has no plan to fix it. I say this: all of the wishful thinking in the world will not address the budget situation we have. If members of the Labor Party want to talk about hurt for future Australian generations, what about the debt levels that have been put on each and every Australian? If we had not taken these measures the debt level for every Australian would be just shy of $25,000. So I hear members opposite spruik on about how proud they are of their budget but the debt that they leave for each and every Australian is disgusting.

The Leader of the Opposition was born in 1967. But I think he was brought up to a song by Dusty Springfield, which was written in 1964 by Burt Bacharach, Wishin' and Hopin'. He must have been thinking about that song when he put out his brochure just before the election. It said, 'We have returned to surplus.' He was a-wishin', a-hopin', a-thinkin' and a-prayin', but he has been absolutely caught out because those on the other side of the chamber have no plan. The rhetoric of the Leader of the Opposition during the budget reply showed he had no plan at all. He has no means of reducing the debt that the opposition had created. The debt, through to the forward estimates of MYEFO, was $177 billion. But there is no plan at all.

Nobody likes implementing budget measures which do not hand out sweeteners, gifts or tax cuts, but we are not able to hand those things out because of the mess we have been left. I heard members opposite spruik on about the global financial crisis. The global financial crisis did not last for six years. And the Howard government took surplus after surplus after surplus. The Howard government took us through 9-11, through SARS, through the Asian meltdown and through the US recession, and still delivered a surplus and growth for this country.

It delivered tax cuts to Australians. The Howard government was able to deliver cheques to each and every senior Australian without going into deficit. This mob—those on the on the other side of the chamber—inherited a budget with a $20 billion surplus. They inherited an economic position of $50 billion in the bank. That did not last long. As with a kid in a candy shop on a Saturday; it all went in the first five minutes. Those on the other side of the chamber promised surpluses but delivered the highest deficits this country has ever seen, and they are proud of it. They are proud of the deficit and the burden they have placed on each and every Australian, and generations to come.

Even though we have taken these measures at this stage we have only been able to reduce the debt level to $389 billion. More work needs to be done. We need to grow our economy. We need to make sure we get more Australians into work so we can address this situation, because if we do not it will not just be up to my children. I do not have any grandchildren yet but one day I might. And it might be their children and their children and their children who will still be paying off the excess largesse of the former, Labor government.

I have not heard one word of apology to the Australian people by this Labor government for the mess that they have created. I want the members opposite to think about one thing: what you could buy with the $12 billion per annum in interest bills. If we were not borrowing to pay off the interest bill what would $12 billion buy? You could do the school funding—Gonski—two times over. You could do Gonski this year and the NDIS this year and still have change left over from the $12 billion.

The Labor opposition, when they were in government, hocked our future. They stopped the ability to invest in the future for each and every Australian, because they do not know the difference between debt and surplus. They do not understand that a deficit is a negative. That was proven by the Leader of the Opposition in the newsletter that he put out for the public saying, 'We have returned to surplus.' Not once did they return to surplus.

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