Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak this evening on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-15 and related bills, I would like to take the opportunity to add my voice to the conversation about fairness that we, as a country, must have and that must be heard at the highest levels and seep into the consciousness of every man and woman in Australia. Can I say how disappointing and frustrating it is that on Australia's budget situation it is the Labor clamour, the left-leaning media and the tweeting keyboard warriors that are drowning out the real and dire situation that we have here. The fact is that we must make changes if we want to have anything resembling our current standard of living in future years and for future generations. It has been said before, and I will say it again, that in 2007 I was a proud member of the Howard government and we had a very strong and sustainable budget with a $20 billion—

Mr Husic interjecting—

Listen to this, the member for Chifley: a $20 billion surplus and $50 billion in the bank. That is something that you guys on the other side would have no concept of what that really means. After six years in a Labor government the deficit has blown-out to $50 billion and gross debt was heading towards $660 billion. Yes, Labor faced the GFC in 2008, but they also had the massive benefit of a resources boom that could not last and it was squandered. They caused this debt with a mining tax that raised a minimal revenue but cost the budget $15 billion in kickbacks to voters. They caused this debt with the pink batts scheme that killed one of the installers, young Mitchell Sweeney, in Far North Queensland, which is up in my area. They caused it through the school halls that cost taxpayers $16 billion. They failed to meet value-for-money requirements. Also, let's not forget the digital set-top boxes for old TVs, which cost hundreds of dollars more than if they had been bought independently. And, of course, the introduction of the NBN blew out from $44.5 million to well over $43 billion, and it is still going northward.

Our problem now is that our taxes are too low and government spending is too high. Taxes are spent on interest payments rather than on the range of services that our communities expect, and there is nothing left for a rainy day when the next global economic shock inevitably occurs. When this happens, the solutions that we will have to undertake will be far worse than those that we are trying to undertake now. As the PM recently said, 'Standing still on reform means going backwards on living standards.' The public backlash against the government's reform attempts over the last nine months has been staggering, leading to our Treasurer and Prime Minister acknowledging that they tried too much too fast, despite the fact this government has tried to bring in far fewer budget reforms than the first budget of John Howard and Peter Costello, the former government of which I was a member in 1996.

It saddens me that this national conversation that we need to have about reform is being hijacked by the wilfully deceptive alliance of Labor, PUP and the Greens, and with a good dose of biased media coverage on the side. My colleague the member for Higgins, the new Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, made a very good speech last month to the Centre for Independent Studies on the concept of fairness. She acknowledges:

Much of the public conversation since the 2014 budget has been about fairness.

That is not surprising given that a fair go is a key part of the Australia psyche. Frustratingly, Labor and the Greens have turned this sophisticated concept into a one-word slogan. In their view, fair means that the budget measures should take more from those with higher incomes that they enjoyed prior to the budget and/or give more to those with lower incomes that they enjoyed prior to the budget. As the member for Higgins says:

We need to engage the Australian public in a conversation about the many other dimensions to fairness than the redistributive dimension. That will be critical to prosecuting economic and social policy reform successfully.

Thinking about fairness, let's look at some figures. ABS data show that households on the lowest income quintile rely on the government for around 55 per cent of their income. At the other end of the scale, households in the highest income quintile receive less than one per cent of their income from government. Looking at the income tax alone in 2011-12—

Debate interrupted.

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