Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was absolutely delighted to hear the member for Sydney refer to that great woman, Margaret Thatcher. I thought I might begin with a quote from Margaret Thatcher herself, given that she was a woman who truly understood achievement—which, of course, is the topic of the MPI here today. She said:

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.

Throughout history, the finest minds have attempted to define achievement—is it more about persistence than force, is failure a necessary precursor? Of course, the postmodern relativists on the other side of the House can define it however they want. But in the real world where I worked and lived before coming into this place, there is a clearly defined space between achievement and underachievement. The last government defined its achievements by the number of bills it passed, the inches of regulation it imposed, the volumes of reports it produced and the number of new agencies it established. As I go around my electorate I can honestly say no-one gives a hang about any of those measures. The only exception I see is the small number of noisy rent seekers whose wallets were lined by the ALP's incessant waste on pork barrelling rorts, like the RDA fund overseen by the member for Ballarat. As someone who comes from the private sector, where outcomes are all that matter, I am more interested in measures that actually have positive impacts on people's lives. Let us look at the scoreboard: 40,000 boat arrivals and over 1,100 deaths became almost zero and years of inaction on trade agreements driven by the incessant lobbying by ALP-focused rent seekers turned to three massive trade agreements that will drive profound, positive and lasting change to our economy. Dysfunctional taxes were abolished with sharp reductions in costs for businesses and households. Cranes started appearing on the skyline in major cities. We refocussed the NBN, finding massive opportunities for efficiencies and acceleration. A structural deficit which was driven, we are told by Deloittes, by $80 billion of windfall revenues is on its way to zero.

I want to focus on one overarching achievement, which I believe trumps all others—we are beginning to reverse the downward pressure on incomes that was set in motion by Labor's deeply flawed economic policies. Rising real incomes across middle Australia have been a bedrock of this country since European settlement. They have defined our egalitarian culture by sharing prosperity across the nation and down generations, provided opportunities for all of us no matter what our background or heritage, delivered widespread prosperity to recent immigrants as well as fifth-generation Australians alike and delivered rising real wages without driving people out of work. But Labor put this at risk. We saw productivity collapse. We lost focus on doing things smarter across everything we do because Labor told their friends they could do and they could have whatever they wanted, and they gave their mates want they wanted. Nowhere was this worse than in the public sector where Labor for many years stifled innovation in the interests of its increasingly powerful public sector union officials.

Most economists will tell you that the greatest opportunity for doing things smarter in Australia is in the public sector, but Labor's new left-wing powerbase was never going to take any notice of that. Unprecedented commodity prices and currency levels, which as I said Deloittes tells us delivered an $80 billion windfall, were wasted on frivolous and sometimes deadly government programs. In contrast, the coalition is laying the foundation for a new era of rising incomes and prosperity. We are doing this by asking ourselves how to do things better, by pushing every dollar of government spending harder in health, in education, in welfare and in infrastructure, whilst still continuing to prudently increase our spending in these areas. By not conceding to the siren call of the rent seekers that the ALP listen to, delivering greater prosperity, opportunity and choice for generation after generation of Australians is a noble calling and one the coalition is up to.

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