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

I thank the Treasurer for his ministerial statement. It is of course appropriate that he represents Australia at the G20 finance ministers meeting, as he does in this office in many different international forums. The burden of international engagement for a modern day Treasurer is a significant one, taking him away from the country and from his family at much more regular intervals than I am sure he would like. I do note that and thank him for his engagement in the G20, in the tradition of modern treasurers. That is as far as my level of agreement with the Treasurer goes in this contribution, but it is a sincere one with which I start these remarks.

I will deal with some of the matters the Treasurer dealt with in his contribution—confidence, growth, jobs and the budget—and I will touch on the situation in China as I conclude. The Treasurer has dealt with the matter of confidence, but I am afraid the Treasurer has perhaps misled us in relation to the causes of the decline of confidence. It is not accurate for the Treasurer to say that the cause of the decline in consumer and business confidence has been recent international volatility, because the decline in consumer and business confidence has been happening for two years.

The Westpac index, which is out today, did show a decline, but it is 15 per cent below where it was at the time of the last election, and all indexes of business and consumer confidence are on the decline. The Treasurer said during question time today that there are many indexes of confidence—and he is right—and they all are showing a decline, and all have been showing a decline for a substantial period of time. In fact, as Westpac themselves said today:

This print on the Index now marks the 17th out of the last 19 months that the Index has been below 100. A level of the Index below 100 indicates that pessimists outnumber optimists. After acknowledging some volatility in the series the underlying picture is that confidence has been little changed over the last year—firmly stuck below 100 and averaging around 96.

The Treasurer's preferred figure—the one that he has indicated previously that he has the most confidence in—the ANZ weekly confidence figures, were 5.8 per cent down last week. Of course, as I mentioned during question time, the NAB Monthly Business Survey confidence figures are at just plus one. The Treasurer, again during question time, said plus one was not a bad result. It was plus 12 at the time of the last federal election. So far from the adrenalin rush of confidence that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer promised the Australian people before the last election to turbo charge the Australian economy, what we have is quite the contrary. Frankly, for the Treasurer to blame international volatility is an excuse from a government in which we were promised no excuses and no surprises—and we have seen many of those two things.

In relation to growth, which is vital to reducing unemployment and creating jobs necessary to see unemployment come down, the picture is not an encouraging one. Again, the Treasurer was quick to claim credit last quarter for 0.9 per cent growth. He said:

… the Australian economy grew at 0.9 of one per cent, which is a strong figure. The momentum is there in the Australian economy. The best friend of the Australian economy is the coalition government.

He said this growth is broad based. He said:

Growth in exports, household spending, services and new dwellings confirms that the Government’s economic plan is working.

If it is the economic plan that is responsible for 0.9 per cent growth you would expect the Treasurer to come out at 0.2 per cent growth and also link it to his economic plan, such that it is. That is not what we have seen. What we have seen, instead, is the Treasurer taking some solace in the fact that the Australian economy is growing faster than Brazil's. This is not a country with which we are normally compared, in economic terms, but it is the one the Treasurer has grabbed, in his desperation to find countries that we are doing better than.

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