Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, firstly, before I begin my contribution, I want to congratulate you on your elevation to that august position. I know that in your role as whip you have been very successful in applying your skills at counting sheep, and now you get to herd them in your new role. I certainly wish you all the best. I enjoy a very good working relationship with you and the approach that you bring to bear on your role. It is not surprising that a Labor member would speak more highly of a National Party member than a Liberal any day of the week!

However, I want to start my contribution on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 with this revelation—a second revelation, if I may, and that is: I agree with the Treasurer. I agree with the Treasurer. I think it is important in the context of the bills that we are considering, the appropriation bills, that we are pressed by a challenge—a fiscal challenge that does need to be addressed, and addressed thoroughly. It will require a lot of people to drop their ideological positions, their opposition, the views that they have had in the past and the views that they champion now in the interests of reform.

I think, when we look at the stats, it is very compelling. In fact, the member for Rankin today walked us through the economic picture that is confronting the country and that I think needs to be considered in this debate. For example, our debt has blown out and is blowing out, and the deficit has tripled since those opposite have come to power and handed down their first budget. The AAA credit rating is now actually being spoken about as being at risk and that it is vulnerable. So we do need to undertake budget repair.

The member for Rankin, the shadow minister for finance, also outlined at a few other stats that I think are very sobering. For example, he outlined that while there is strong headline economic growth, or GDP growth, of 3.3 per cent there are still some challenges that sit in the background. Despite low interest rates, investment is falling. Mining investment has collapsed and while other sectors might be picking up some slack, not all the slack is being picked up. Total private investment has plummeted nearly 15 per cent in just 12 months—15 per cent in just 12 months! For those who are interested, this is the worst yearly drop in nearly 16 years. GDP growth for the June quarter was driven entirely by the government sector, and if that had not been there growth would have been negative.

Real net national disposable income per capita grew by 0.2 per cent in the June quarter, but living standards remain nearly two per cent below the level at the 2013 election. Wages growth is the slowest on record—a number of us have been raising this concern for some time; it is why families feel under the pinch and very concerned about their personal financial situation. So, the outlook remains considerably uncertain. As a result of all this, government revenue will remain under pressure as well. Ongoing budget deficits and the trajectory of the debt simply are unsustainable, with debt to GDP rising faster than most other advanced economies.

There is going to have to be a broad solution. We cannot simply cut our way out of this; we are going to need to look at spending measures, or cutting spending, at the same time as looking at increasing revenue in other places. Even the Treasurer is conceding that this is probably something that will need to happen.

The budget itself is in worse shape than when we last left office in 2013. Net debt is out by over $100 billion and the deficit, as I said earlier, has tripled. The coalition's first budget in 2014 predicted that in 2016-17—so, this financial year—we would have a deficit of $10.6 billion, and now it will rise to $37.1 billion this year. Taxation is higher every year under the Liberals than any Labor budget. Government spending, at 25.8 per cent of GDP, is higher now than at any point since the peak of the global financial crisis. And bear in mind that when Labor was in office we constantly got from the other side how high the spending had been while they airbrushed the actual event of the GFC itself. Clearly, these are things that need to be addressed.

So I come back to my point said earlier, and that is that I agree with the Treasurer. We have to listen to him and work together. We need to be less divided. When I said we need people to work together, I, and many Australians, want those who stand in the way of budget repair to drop their opposition, to drop the ideology and to unite. And so I think a number of us in this place will be urging that the people who need to get on board are the coalition backbench, because we get told all the time by the Treasurer that Labor has to work with it. But the issue is that Labor has said, and not just said but outlined, ways in which we can actually deliver budget repair.

As the member for Rankin rightly observed today, there are not many oppositions who, within the first few weeks of a new parliament, can outline a better trajectory of savings than the government. And that is what we did. In the first few weeks, we outlined $8 billion of measures that we think can improve the budget bottom line. And they are things that have to be looked at. But they will not be looked at. Why? Because the coalition backbench is standing in the way and refusing to allow the government to concede, to consider, to think about, to even scope out whether, for example, there could be reform of negative gearing in this country. They will not allow them to do it.

In fact, we had the extraordinary revelation that on a key piece of economic reform, on a measure being considered by cabinet, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—and bear in mind that the Treasurer acknowledged there were excesses in negative gearing and suggested that we needed to address this—got rolled by opposition, led within the cabinet, to that move. It is extraordinary that a Prime Minister and a Treasurer would be rolled on an economic measure. But voices within the federal government know they are backed up by a backbench that will not accept this change.

As much as people say that the Senate is divided, riven, fractured, let us just check out how many leaders of political movements are in this place. You have a leader of the Liberal Party. You have a leader of the National Party. You have a leader of the Labor Party. You have a Greens representative. You have the leader of the Bob Katter Party. You have a Nick Xenophon member. You have a score of independents. And you have a second 'leader of the opposition' in the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott. He stands as the second leader of the opposition in this place, arguing within the coalition against any moves being considered by the Turnbull government. Everyone is wondering why Malcolm will not be Malcolm. Well, he will not be because he is not allowed to be. He is always looking over his shoulder. He does not look forward; he is always walking with a look over his shoulder, trying to fathom whether he will be rolled by his backbench, led by the second leader of the opposition in this place, the member for Warringah—and doesn't he love that role! He is the best opposition leader on either this side of the place or on that side of the place, and he is always urging for his view to be the most dominant one.

We get a lot of lectures about 'respecting mandates'. In fact, in the whole debate about marriage equality and the plebiscite, we were told that the coalition is prepared to spend $160 million on a plebiscite and has a mandate. But what happens when we look at, for example, a budget measure introduced in haste this year on superannuation? What happens with that? We do not have a mandate. We had Senator Sinodinos say that, if the coalition won the election, they would have a mandate for the superannuation policies that they took to the election. They cannot change their position on marriage equality—because they have a mandate and they took that promise to the election. But what we got now on superannuation? We have the Treasurer having to negotiate not with Labor but with his own backbench on a key policy measure that was announced in the budget. It had supposedly received a mandate but it now has to be negotiated with the backbench.

On top of that, we had a former leader on their side of politics—the second opposition leader of this country—go to a briefing led by the Treasurer and attended by the Minister for Revenue and criticise them both on the policy that has been put forward. Newspaper accounts suggest that he just flicked the policy document aside—as we know, the member for Warringah is not necessarily a person who is encumbered by detail—and castigated both the Treasurer and the Minister for Revenue on the policy that is being announced on superannuation reform by those people and others. So this is what we have got.

In trying to address budget repair, it is not the Labor Party that those opposite should be looking at; if anything, the coalition frontbench should be entering into a union with the Labor Party to get budget repair done. If the coalition frontbench are stuck with trying to negotiate with the coalition backbench, we will get nowhere because they are not prepared to concede from their ideological position about what should happen. It is not like the coalition Liberals can turn to the National Party, their supposed coalition partners. These are not agrarian socialists; these are agrarian Trots who would just love to see the Liberal Party fail so that they can take more positions within the cabinet. You could see the contest in the election; they were more than willing to contest against Liberal Party members. Whenever you talk to a National Party member in this place, it does not take them long to reveal their disdain for the Liberal Party.

And look what happens on economic policy. We have a situation in this country where one state is arguing for an increase in mining royalties. The WA Nationals are arguing for an increase in royalties, an increase in imposts. That side of politics championed a reduction in the impost on the mining sector. The Prime Minister says this is troublesome. And what do we get out of the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party in this place? A nod and a slow wink to his colleagues in WA, suggesting it is okay to increase taxes. This comes from the party whose raison d'etre, their whole reason for being elected, was to remove the mining tax. They are now arguing for it and sending out the signal that that is okay, while back in Canberra they will not even countenance changes to revenue. So what is going on? There is no unity on that side.

Given the economic challenges the government faces, and given the impact that that puts on the fiscal and budget repair that is supposed to be at the heart of this bill, you need that side, we need that side, the country needs that side to be united and actually get their act together. But they are not, and they will not.

And this is just going to get worse. The division we have seen is just going to get worse. And we saw it on display last week when the second leader of the opposition, in the absence of the Prime Minister, decided he would float a number of things. Amazingly, the person who had been reluctant on electoral donation reform decided he would now champion it by effectively picking up every idea in the public space, claiming it as his own and going out there and talking about it. The week before, we saw him go and meet with the leader of One Nation. It was not a sanctioned visit. He decided to go and have a cup of tea—and then he put it in a video, mind you!

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