Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great delight for me to be able to stand in this chamber and speak on this motion. I do find it slightly ironic that those opposite have proposed a motion about underachievement. It is ironic to me, because it is something, I think, that they know a little bit about. Really, from those opposite, it comes as some high praise. But I think that, in order to properly consider this motion about underachievement, one needs to measure it against a particular standard. I can think of no better standard than that of the member for Lilley.

The member for Lilley promised in this place—and outside of this place—a surplus on more than 400 occasions. In fact, he inherited a $20 billion surplus, and yet delivered in his time as Treasurer over $190 billion worth of deficits and bequeathed to this government another $123 billion worth of deficits going forward. What does this mean? It means increased debt, and on that debt you pay interest. That interest payment is coming in currently at $1 billion a month, which, of course, means about $12 billion a year, and it is going to go up, if we do not reduce the debt, to around $3 billion a month. But we are focused on reducing the debt, and I will have more to say about some of our achievements later.

Given that I have had some recent experience looking at the experience of foreign investment as chair of the House Standing Committee on Economics, I think it is important to draw the House's attention to underachievement in this particular area. Across the evidence that we received in our committee, it came to my attention that, in 2008, the Assistant Treasurer, Chris Bowen, delivered a quiet press release just before Christmas that took away the ability of the Foreign Investment Review Board to screen temporary residents from needing to go to the Foreign Investment Review Board for that screening. It meant that it was very difficult for the Foreign Investment Review Board to conduct proper audit and compliance. They did this very quietly. They did not announce it. They did it quietly, and this led to a very significant change in our foreign investment framework.

Realising that they had made a tremendously significant mistake and hearing this from the local community, they promised before the 2010 election that they would do something about it. Senator Nick Sherry made grand proclamations, as Assistant Treasurer, in a press release, saying that they were going to restore the screening arrangements for temporary residents to have to go to FIRB for the purchase of existing homes. He also promised a number of other things. Not only did he promise that all temporary residents seeking to purchase an existing property would be brought within FIRB notification—which, of course, they had got rid of—he also promised that they would have a better compliance regime, better enforcement measures and new civil penalties, and that real estate agents would be proactively monitored. He said:

I want to make sure that all arms of the Australian government are working optimally together to secure prosecutions where breaches occur.

So, what happened? There has been not one court prosecution since 2006 and not one property divested since 2007. When the next Assistant Treasurer came along after the election he took on responsibility for putting in place this plan. And who was that person? That person was Bill Shorten, and under Bill Shorten not much happened. The civil penalty regime did not happen. The capital gains penalty did not happen. The checks on real estate agents did not happen. Closer enforcement links with the Director of Public Prosecutions did not happen, and data matching with the states did not progress beyond initial trials. About the only thing that did happen was they introduced a hotline. So if you want to talk about underachievement in this place you need to look no further than the Leader of the Opposition who brought forward this motion. He is the biggest underachiever of them all.

We have had significant achievements in government. In the short time that we have been in government, and inheriting the legacy that we did, we have been able to get rid of the carbon tax, which reduces the costs on family, we have stopped the boats, we have got rid of a mining tax, we have been building for the future with our record infrastructure investment of more than $50 billion and we have concluded three free trade agreements with Japan, Korea and China. We are trying to get on with the job of long-term structural reform, but we are being blocked by those opposite.

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