Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

One thing is very clear: the government that brought down the wrong plan at budget time have no plan for their next budget. They brought down the wrong plan in their last budget, but they have no plan for their next budget, and the Australian economy is paying a price for that. It is an extraordinary situation that the parliament will rise tomorrow and the next time we sit will be budget week and yet we still have a Prime Minister and a Treasurer and an entire government at sixes and sevens over the last budget, let alone the next budget. We have a Treasurer who has shown, so close to budget time, that there is a cost to be paid for this level of dysfunction. It is a cost to be paid by the Australian economy. We have got a government, a Treasury and a nation that are dealing with this Treasurer's inability to deal with the basic tasks involved in being Treasurer of this nation.

We all know there was a big cost to be paid for the last budget. It was paid by pensioners and paid by families. But there is a cost also for the economy. That cost is borne by people right across the country—people who want a job, people who are looking for work, people who are joining the growing unemployment lines around this country. There is a cost to be paid by Australian businesses—not businesses with large margins but small businesses who are struggling to get by and who need consumer and business confidence to do so. They are paying the price for this Treasurer's incompetence as well, because we are seeing a situation where this government's actions are impacting on economic growth. We are seeing a real impact on economic growth in the country. I must say, in fairness to the government, they have come up with a rather unique strategy to deal with this. It has been tried by the Minister for Finance. He said on ABC News Breakfast earlier in the week, 'Economic growth has been strengthening all throughout 2014.'

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