David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Assistant Minister for Rural Health) Share this | Hansard source

Six hundred and sixty seven billion dollars—that is right; that was the debt trajectory that the Labor-Greens left this nation. We have been working very hard to deliver sensible, rational economic policy. We have been trying to deliver a budget surplus, but every time we initiate budget savings they tend to block them, even ones that they had proposed themselves. We are trying to keep our AAA credit rating intact. Yet, the actions of the opposition are putting our credit rating at risk. They promised to keep John Howard's Pacific Solution, only to dismantle it and then see more than 50,000 illegal boat arrivals and over 1,000 deaths at sea. They gave away our border sovereignty and cost us $14 billion.

We have been working hard across all arms of parliament and government to try and effect budget savings to fix the budget mess. We are pulling every lever that we can to grow our economy. We have invested record amounts in health, education and infrastructure. This year in health alone over $74 billion is being spent. They cut $6 billion out of Medicare when they were last in government and they tried to take $400 million out of medical research. We have seen record investment in health. Another $4 billion is budgeted to be spent over the next four years in Medicare, along with another $2.9 billion in hospitals. That is capped at a 6½ per cent growth. We still have activity-based funding. And the PBS is funding over 1,200 new medicines that account for over $4½ billion.

The other side seems to have selective amnesia about their failures. They forgot that Australia never forgets. They have forgotten about all the public policy fiascos that they had—the pink batts, the school halls, the cash for clunkers and the live cattle exports debacle. That was one of the biggest failures of public policy ever. They destroyed the whole economies of northern Australia. They devalued property and put people out of work. People lost their assets. When cattle flooded into southern markets, it dropped the value of cattle in southern markets, as well. Every effort has been put in to try to fix the budget mess that we have inherited. With free trade deals and expanded export markets, we have a booming cattle trade now.

With the NBN, they spent $6 billion over six years with only 50,000 customers to show. In the last four years, 3.2 million people have been connected. There is over one and half million customers. With major infrastructure spending, there have been multibillion-dollar investments in the Pacific Highway and Bruce Highway. We have restored $2 billion that was taken out of the Pacific Highway, and it is being completed all the way to the Queensland border. We have tax cuts for middle-income earners, stopping them from going up into the second-highest tax bracket. We have small business tax cuts down to 27½ per cent. We have accelerated depreciation for farm equipment, fencing repairs and fodder storage. We are putting record funding back into the construction of new dams. That is $2½ billion. Work is being done to get the Rookwood Weir improvements done. The Chaffey Dam extension is being completed. Money has gone into the Macalister Irrigation District. We have the Inland Rail at $839 million into the budget and activities going there. We have work on the Toowoomba range crossing. We are boosting investment in all parts of regional Australia in our Building Better Regions Fund and the jobs and investment funds across the country.

We have addressed the lawlessness and the malfeasance in the registered organisations commission bill, and the ABCC bill has been passed, which will get proper governance back onto building and construction sites. Restoring the rule of law in the building and construction industry will help everyone across Australia—not just the people trying to build a building. For people who want to rent space, their leases will be cheaper if buildings are cheaper. The same is for first-home owners. Buying buildings that are expensive to build is the net result of inefficient and ridiculous work conditions that put the costs of everything up.

You cannot have amnesia and put in an MPI like this when you see all the abject failures and all the obstruction that has gone on with trying to get our budgetary position back into the black. A lot of people on the other side make out that they care, but, most times, I think that they just cannot count. A budget is a difficult thing to do if you are not prepared to make the big cuts that you need to make to bring down spending—spending that is projected to go to $660 billion if you do not change the budgetary items. That is the critical thing. Those opposite are not prepared to take any hard decisions. They want to act like Father Christmas and talk about spending more, but the presents at the bottom of the Christmas tree are just giant, big IOUs for our future generations.

Initiating savings measures is not being mean and nasty; it is being responsible. The things that we have done over the last year have been done to try to get the budget back in order. There is the NBN. Probably the biggest issue that I get questions on in my electorate relate to the delayed rollout of the NBN. Finally, we have the NBN rollout. Having 50,000 people signing up each month was nirvana when those opposite were administering it, but now it is happening in reality. As I said, 3.4 million people in Australia can now connect to the NBN, and there are over 1½ million paying customers. We have got the Sky Muster satellite up and we have got the second one that has just been launched. When that is up there will be excess capacity. In the health budget, we have runs on the board. There was a cut of $6 billion out of the health budget when the other side was governing, and we have put $6 billion into both hospitals and Medicare in this last funding arrangement. And then we see the wonderful list of over 1,200 drugs that are now on the PBS courtesy of strong budget management.

Eventually, someone has to pay—and it is usually the government. But the other side seem to think that they are helping people by borrowing more money without any plan to ever pay it back—and they compare our nation's finances to basket cases overseas that have so much debt that they are never, ever going to be in a position to pay their debt off. The infrastructure that we are delivering on the Pacific Highway, on the Bruce Highway, on inland rail and on dams is going to grow the economy. Just the dams work will allow over 2,000 new people to work in agriculture in Central Queensland. But we have to get it done. That is why we are taking our budget responsibility so seriously.

You can have 10 minutes of comedy gags from the Leader of the Opposition—he must have a good speechwriter because he got a few laughs—but this is serious business.

Mr Rob Mitchell interjecting—

I am not a comedy man; I am just dealing with the facts. You can belittle the place by having one-liners, but we are trying to get our budget back in the black so that our children and their children are not saddled with mountains of debt. You have to realise that changing the budget narrative is something that you will never accept. Like I said, the Christmas present for our children should not be a massive IOU; it should be sensible government making sensible decisions to deliver a sound economy that will employ more Australians and get our nation back to the prosperity it should have.

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