Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I have one question: does this Treasurer get anything right? He gets nothing right. Let's go through a roll call. Let's do a quick rundown. He told us that there would be an adrenaline surge in confidence. Wrong! It is 13 per cent lower than at the election. He told us there would be a million jobs, but unemployment is worse than it was in the GFC. He told us, 'We will achieve a surplus in our first year in office.' He said that. Where did that one go? Here is another one. He said budgets would be better under them. He said, 'I can promise that the coalition will deliver a better budget bottom line.' In MYEFO, in one budget statement, it went worse than ever. It will be interesting to see how MYEFO delivers in the next few weeks.

I love these quotes. Joe Hockey is like a quote vending machine: you just have to hit him and he comes out with another one. Here is another one—'We must return stable, predictable, honest government to Australia.' That is beautiful! He said, 'The objective of the coalition over time is to reduce the overall tax burden on business and taxpayers, not to increase it.' What about this one? He said, 'The government does not have a revenue collection problem; it has a revenue forecasting problem.' That is what he said. What happened when iron ore started moving? We suddenly started getting the excuses. We also got this whopper—'Poor people don't drive.' There was that one as well. Does he get anything right?

I do not, we do not and the Hockey enthusiasts do not need to answer the question, 'Does the Treasurer get anything right?' Do you know why? It is because the answer was on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday in an article headed 'PM's man to focus on economy' when Peter Hartcher wrote:

The anxious Abbott government is hoping it will be revived by the new head of the Prime Minister's Department, who starts work on Monday with a brief to concentrate on the government's economic agenda.

In an implicit acknowledgement that the government has lost much confidence in the Treasurer …

There you go! Does he get anything right? We do not have to answer that question because those opposite have answered it for us. When Joe goes poorly, they roll out Thawley. That is what they do. They are bringing in Thawley to help out because they have no confidence left in the Treasurer.

I wonder if the Treasurer even knew, because he has not had a good week of being told what is going on with his own budget strategy. Last week he had to find out through the bush telegraph that runs through the press gallery that they were about to announce that the GP tax was going. Whoops! When did he find out about that? He did not find out through the proper cabinet process that we were promised would occur by that side. He found out because it was running through the press gallery like wildfire. Then what happened? The Treasurer stood his ground and said, 'The GP tax will stay.' Will it stay or will it go? We do not know. This is the stable government we were promised by those opposite! Look at the way they are operating.

The biggest economic challenge facing the economy right now is confidence. But how do you get confidence if the coalition does not even have confidence in its own Treasurer? We want the economy to be able to grow because of confidence. However, it has been thugged. Confidence has been thugged by the coalition. If you are a single-income family or a family that is on $65,000, you have had $6,000 taken out by this budget. Wages growth is hardly growing. It is probably the worst the RBA has seen since it began keeping records. Confidence has been further mugged because of the fact that the Treasurer has his hand in every wallet and purse, taking out money by the thousands through a horror budget where pensions were cut, family payments were cut, support for young unemployed people was cut, a GP tax was brought in and petrol taxes went up.

I end on this quote from the Treasurer. This was said by the Treasurer when he was the shadow Treasurer. He said:

The government—

he was talking about us—

wants to blame anything and anyone else for the budget mess.

(Time expired)

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