Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

That is right. We are hearing, 'That's wrong!'

A government member interjecting—

I presume you are about as loyal a supporter as Joe Hockey gets in that party room. But it is not only that. When you look at what has happened with debt, what they have done with debt, they said they were going to pay down debt. Net debt for Australia today is the highest it has been in the history of the nation. It has never been as high as it is right now. So they should not for one minute think that they can walk into this chamber or walk through any Australian community group claiming that for debt and deficit they are in any way the answer.

I disagree with the shadow Treasurer, I have to say. When they turned up with the fire truck, they did not kick the tyre and drive away—they threw a Molotov cocktail before they went. They made sure that the deficit continued to blow out and then gave the absolute reverse of a magic pudding. They made sure they delivered a budget that was bad for the economy; a budget that crashed confidence; a budget that then saw a lack of business confidence and a lack of consumer confidence, and, consequently, continue to spiral with deficits growing year on year.

The Prime Minister, in budget reply, back in 2011 was at this despatch box. He gave three tests. He said:

People can be confident that spending, debt and taxes will always be lower under a coalition government …

We will take each of those in turn. We have seen what has happened with debt: it is higher under this government. After the global financial crisis, with Labor, spending growth continued at an average of 1.3 per cent; in this budget, spending growth over the same period of time grows by 1.8 per cent. This government is a higher spending government than the previous government, post the GFC. In terms of taxes, average taxes when Labor was in office were 20.8 per cent across the forwards; under this budget, 22.6 per cent in receipts. I know they find it hard even dealing with a double number being a bigger one, but with 20 to 22, it is the second number that is the bigger one. This is the opposite, again, of what the Prime Minister promised.

There is nothing in any of the global budget numbers that competes with the lack of integrity and extraordinary hypocritical approach to policy from this Prime Minister than what he has done on paid parental leave. For years, he would look at existing paid parental schemes and say, 'These schemes are terrible because they are woefully inadequate". All of a sudden, in the last we discover, yes, he still hates those schemes because they are unnecessarily generous and anyone who is receiving benefits from them is somebody who the Treasurer will agree is tantamount to fraud or who the social services minister will describe as being in a rort. Those opposite have failed under every test that they have put forward. Are they a government that would allegedly be involved in bringing down debt? No. Reducing the deficit? No, they have doubled it. Reducing tax? No, they have increased it. Reducing spending? No, they have increased it. On what was meant to be the signature policy by which we were to know who this Prime Minister was—this was the policy that would define the Prime Minister—we thought it was extraordinary enough when he abandoned that policy; now he is advocating the diametrically opposed position, arguing the exact opposite. We know what this Prime Minister stands for. He stands for one job: his own. That is all the budget is about. That is all the conversations with the party room that he engaged in are about. Not one of his arguments from before the election— (Time expired)

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