Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

And I do recall a time when many others in this place have said similar things. Tony Abbott and the government broke their promises on education funding, on schools, on universities, on hospitals. I know it is difficult for people to hear this; I know it is hard. The truth is sometimes the hardest thing to hear. When it is just presented to you in cold, hard day light, you look at it and ask: how can this be? How can so many promises have been made—that there would be no broken promises, that there would be no cuts in school funding, that there would be new taxes without an election—and then broken? Well, it depends, if you redefine what a tax is, but the Australian people have no question as to the definition of what all of these things are and they are all broken promises.

One promise I remember was the returning of adults to the parliament. I am yet to see the adults come in. That is a pretty big broken promise. Tony Abbott promised to return the adults to the parliament. Where are they? Where are the adults? We see the farcical nature of what happens with the conduct of the House be it with the Speaker of the House and the concern that the Labor Party has in the conduct of the Speaker or whether it be the conduct of ministers, the Prime Minister or others. I do not think this promise was made to the Australian people nor do they think it is the promise that was made to them. I cannot see the return of the adults. If we just focused on that one promise, I would be upset enough and I am sure the Australian people are. I cannot remember before the election a promise to introduce a fuel tax. I do not remember that promise but, if that promise was made, it was kept and it would be the only promise that was kept. But I am sure you could scour through all the words that were said and that promise was not kept. There are some things that are promises or are not promises. There are some things which just are Orwellian in nature. For example, in Australia we all know colloquially if you are short, you are called tall; if you are tall, you are called 'Shortie'; if you have got red hair, you are called 'Blue'; and if you are Prime Minister, you are called the Prime Minister for women—and I think that says a lot.

Even the Liberals and the Nationals are nervous. They are very nervous; we can see it in their eyes, their speeches, their actions every single day. They are nervous about this budget because they know when they go out to their electorates they can use whatever words they like but when Liberal Party members and Nationals members go out and talk to real people in the street—their electors—their electors say, 'You broke promises.' That is what they say. The Liberals and the community know that this is not the budget that Tony Abbott promised at the election. This is not the government that Tony Abbott promised at the election either.

Where are the adults? Where is the consumer confidence that was promised? Let me tell you a very startling statistic, which I checked yesterday. Consumer confidence after the budget hit 99.3 on the scale. To understand what that means, it means it has gone below the neutral point. That has not happened since the GFC. It has not been that low since the GFC, May 2009. During our time in government, the Labor government, it averaged around 113. It averaged on par or above average. Consumer confidence was actually good, which meant the economy was strong, which meant people were in work, which meant businesses could stay open. I remember Tony Abbott promising that consumer confidence would be up. There would be a miraculous turnaround and that we were open for business, but why are doors shutting? Why is consumer confidence down, business confidence down? Why is confidence down in this Prime Minister and in this government?

Unemployment at the election was 5.8 per cent. Unemployment today is 5.8 per cent. It is not good enough; it is about the same. In a budget emergency maybe there would be some change, maybe there should be some difference. I remember Tony Abbott the Liberals promising a miraculous turnaround. It would be lower. It does not seem lower; it seems the same. Is what the government saying is they cannot do any better?

Is that what they are saying: they can't do any better? When we left government last year, interest rates were at 2.5 per cent—historically low; very good. That is really good. Why is it good? Because it means that people get to pay their mortgages and, as long as they have a job, at lower interest rates, people are fairly safe, and that is a pretty good thing. Interest rates today are at 2.5 per cent—they are the same; they are not lower; they are just the same. And I suspect that they will stay about the same, give or take a little bit, over the coming while. Could it possibly be that Tony Abbott is no better at interest rates than we were? So what does that mean—that he is no better at the economy? He is no better at something.

Turning to consumer confidence—here is a difference: consumer confidence is down. It is down markedly. When we left government—and this is a very telling story—government debt to GDP was 12 per cent. But today, miraculously, it is much more. Today it is 13 per cent to 14 per cent. What has changed in eight or nine months? What could possibly have changed to make debt worse, to make debt more? It is that the government has deliberately added to debt. They have deliberately changed the assumptions on debt. They have actually made our economy worse by making it worse themselves. What does that do? It makes things worse. Does it make it look like there is a budget emergency? Not according to the Parliamentary Budget Office or Phil Bowen. It does not actually make it worse. He says that there is no budget emergency—his words: 'no budget emergency'.

So what we have in front of us is a government and a Prime Minister willing to say anything and do anything—to swing the wrecking ball. They have, for the past three years, just wrecked the joint. It was a simple proposition: wreck the joint; wreck everything; destroy consumer confidence. Even with all of that, we managed, with a hung parliament, to succeed in terms of keeping the economy strong, keeping people in jobs, keeping interest rates low, making sure that students had opportunities and making sure that small business grew.

And guess what? There were actually more small businesses during our time in office than there had ever been in the past. The number grew faster and there was an addition of small businesses. But what was even more startling about that figure was that there were more small businesses actually making more money than there were small businesses making less money.

That was the case because Labor understood that, if you are going to help the economy grow, and you believe in small business—you believe that they are the engine room of the economy and the employer of people in the economy—then you assist them and you assist them directly. You make sure that at key, critical times you are not wasting money on them; you are investing in small business. If you invest in small business, they get to employ people and keep their doors open and keep our economy strong. We did that, through some very good and deliberate things.

Labor has got a fantastic track record on that. I know that that might sound strange, particularly to the Liberal Party. But what did the Liberal Party do when it came to government? The first thing it did was to attack its friends, the small business people. It ripped away $4 billion worth of direct assistance. It took away the tax loss carry back. It took away a whole range of assistance that was there and, even worse, it not only said, 'We are going to take away, directly, money and assistance that helps you to operate and employ people,' but also it took away services and programs—important ones.

Who in their right mind would ever cut Commercialisation Australia? This is the group charged with helping small business to get from entrepreneurship and innovation to the next big step forward. Every time you hear any member in this place talking about innovation they always go, 'It's great; we're great innovators but we can't get to commercialisation.' Well, that was Commercialisation Australia's role, and it did it really well. Take the Innovation Investment Fund—innovation investment: surely that is a good thing for the economy? Surely you would invest in people? Then there was Australian Industry Participation, because industry came to us in government and said, 'When there are really large contracts, it is foreign companies that come in; they get the lion's share and Australian industry misses out.' We said, 'You will need to compete and compete fairly, but we might set up a program which means there has to be a participation plan.' It was well accepted. It was a good program, by the way—really good. Gone! Enterprise Solutions—gone. Industry innovation councils—gone. Enterprise Connect—gone. Industry innovation precincts—gone. What does this tell you about this government, as to all this innovation and enterprise? One, that they do not care about it, and, two, that it is not one of their priorities.

In the few minutes that I have left, I will talk about—as painful as it is, because it is painful—how it is the ordinary people that pay the highest price. It is the elderly. It is those who will be paying an extra $7 as a new GP tax—a tax that no-one heard about before the election—every time they go to the doctor, get a scan or pick up their prescriptions. It is students who will have to pay a lot, lot more, pay it back quicker and pay higher interest rates. Getting the budget back in order does not mean you have to slug students, who are some of the poorest citizens in the country. Certainly you would not be slugging pensioners. Certainly you would not be using tricky words. The Prime Minister or the government would not be using tricky words around pensioners because pensioners, in my view, are a no-go zone for these sorts of changes. That was the promise that was made before the election, that there would be no change for pensioners—nothing, no touching pensions. That promise was clear to me and I think it was clear to every single pensioner in this country.

It was clear to families that nothing would get changed in terms of family tax benefit A or B. Guess what? They are getting slugged as well. The sick, the elderly, workers and people looking for a job are too. We are supposed to be helping people. Isn't that the idea? If you want a strong economy, 5.8 per cent unemployment is too high—whatever the figure is, it is too high—but people will have to keep working. The reality is there are people out there looking for work and they want work. The problem is there are not enough jobs to provide for all of them. In the meantime, government have a duty as does the community, because we are in a good society and we have a rich country, and we should acknowledge that. I am sure plenty of people around this parliament could look and go 'tut, tut, tut' and all the rest of it, but the reality is we do have great country.

I just cannot wait for the one time when Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of this country stands up and backs Australia, in a speech here, overseas or anywhere, and says something good about the country, something good about the economy, something good about workers, something good about pensioners and something good about all the people who built this country. My challenge to the Prime Minister is to go out there just once and say something good about Australia—back your own country when you go overseas and say good things about your country. This is a disgraceful budget and it should be condemned.

See this speech in context