Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It is the end of another big sitting week in Canberra. Lots of things have happened this week, and I think one of the most important, if we are honest about it, is that we are finishing the week with one less member in this place than we started with: the member for North Sydney has moved on. And for all the disagreements we had with the member for North Sydney, for all the substantial policy problems we had with his budgets and his approach to the economy, I think as he takes that long and winding road back today—the three- or four-hour drive from Canberra to North Sydney, with all his stuff packed up in the back of the car—he will probably take some quiet satisfaction that his replacement is no better than he is. And when the social services minister goes back to his office today and closes the door and curls up into a ball and rocks back and forth and mutters to himself about what happened to him in question time today, he can also take comfort from the fact that he is no worse than the Treasurer. And when the major projects minister goes back and wonders how he got caught defending a hole that was dug and a photo taken before the hole was filled back in again as a major project, he will at least thank his lucky stars that he is not going as badly as the Treasurer of this country.

The Treasurer fails to understand, when we ask him in question time whether growth has been revised up or revised down—that is pretty important for a Treasurer to know—and when he is asked what his plans are for the surplus and when we might have one. He says, 'In the future'. We are going to have one in the future. Then he gets up, in an answer to a question from the member for McMahon, and accidentally confirms that the spending of those opposite is actually higher than the spending that we left them with, which blew out of the water—completely torpedoed—all the rubbish from the member for Petrie, all the rubbish from those opposite about spending in this economy. He got up and in a big whoops moment decided that he would confirm that they are bigger spenders than we were in government. But more serious than all the gaffes and all the gobbledygook from the Treasurer is his failure to provide economic leadership, and that is what this MPI is about—his failure to convert his campaign of undermining the member for North Sydney into a plan for the economy of this nation.

From time to time, when ministers get up, it is possible to bluff, bluster and bumble your way through question time, but it is not possible to bluff, bluster and bumble your way to jobs, growth and opportunity in this economy. It has been two years now and a picture has emerged of their economic management. That picture ain't pretty.

The numbers do not lie. As the member for McMahon ran through, we do have some sickening numbers in the economy at the moment: growth at 0.2 per cent in the June quarter; annual GDP growth of just two per cent, well below trend; since the government's first budget we have seen annual GDP growth trending downwards quarter after quarter; five consecutive quarters of declining living standards; unemployment up to 6.2 per cent; 800,000 Australians out of work; consumer sentiment down 12 per cent from what it was at the election; a budget deficit which has doubled in the last 12 months; and real wages growing at their slowest rate since the ABS began measuring wages growth in our economy. That is the economic record of those opposite.

In this country we need to rebuild our economy an create jobs that last. That is the main task of this parliament at this time in our nation's history. Our economy is at a key juncture. We are in a transition in this economy between one where we have relied for a long time on the high prices that people will pay for our commodities to one that will rely more heavily on innovation and human capital, the sorts of things that the member for Chifley has been on about for as long as I have know him. We do need to focus on those things. Our remarkable quarter-century of growth in this country is at serious risk. If we choose the wrong path, if we get it wrong, we will lose that legacy.

Our choice, as the Leader of the Opposition says, is to get smarter or get poorer. Getting smarter means investing in science and technology. It means teaching and training our people for the jobs of the future and growing our economy in a way that ensures that there is enough opportunity to go around. That is the task of this parliament.

Instead we have a Treasurer who is not up to the task, who does not have a plan to do those things that we need, a Treasurer who was sacked from the board of Tourism Australia unanimously. He got 200 grand more as a payout than he was entitled to and refused to pay it back. He is a guy who got refused an adviser's licence by ASIC. That is the Treasurer of this country. He has a seriously chequered record. No wonder there is no plan for the future of this country or this economy with this Treasurer in charge.

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