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

Each year, when budget night comes around, there will be different things that people hope to have said in the budget speech. We've got this unusual situation now where, if you want something to actually happen, the last thing that you want is for the government to announce it, because the moment they announce it you know it's doomed; you know it doesn't stand a chance. So this year we have to choose between what we might want announced and what we actually want to occur. It all comes down to a mug. When the Prime Minister says, 'No-one could have predicted the pandemic,' that's true, but what those opposite forget is that they promised a surplus every single budget. We've now had six budgets and they haven't done it once. They say, 'The crisis we're dealing with now is bigger than the global financial crisis.' Yes—but we've had six years without a global financial crisis, and they've more than doubled the debt. And when they announced it last year, let's not pretend that it was then the pandemic that was the reason that the announcement didn't come true, because it was back in January that they refused to continue their commitment to a surplus. It was before the coronavirus had reached Australia, before the coronavirus lockdowns had started to hit the economy, that the surplus was already gone.

So this government is now in a situation where, having come to government claiming and announcing that they would deliver a surplus every single time, they never have delivered a surplus. They never will deliver a surplus. They have gone from doubling Australia's debt to now being on track towards $1 trillion of debt for Australia. And every single time they make the announcement we know what's coming, because, if you want to stop something in this country, the most effective way of stopping it is to get the Prime Minister of this country to announce it! He's there for the photo-op but never for the follow-up. If you go into the CBD of Sydney, there are all these old sandstone facades, and if you look behind the facade that's being propped up there's just rubble and a big hole. Every time I look at that rubble I think: 'The Prime Minister must have announced he was going to build something there,' because the facade is all that's there! He's like the kid playing knock and run, and the Australian people come to the front door and think, 'Oh! Nothing here.' It's like that scene in TheSound of Musicwhere the MC comes up and announces the next act, and the big announcement is: 'The von Trapp Family singers!' Nothing. Then it's: 'The family von Trapp!' Still nothing. And before you know it someone runs on and says they're gone, and the main act is halfway up the hill hiding behind a tombstone in a convent!

What this government does, every single time, is just to riddle the Australian public with announcements. They made such a mess during the bushfires, and realised that the communications strategy wasn't real great, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Instead, they'd have a communications strategy—and nothing else!

Remember, year after year, we normally get, in the lead-up to the budget, that this is going to be the infrastructure budget. Every year we get told about the infrastructure changes that will happen. And when the Prime Minister today was challenged on the fact that, for six consecutive budgets, what they've announced has never been matched by what they've done, and when the member for Ballarat pointed out the $1.7 billion shortfall in what they'd announced compared to what actually happened in the last financial year, what was the Prime Minister's response? To get up with a series of talking points and tell us what they'd announced! That isn't the point.

They've announced a whole lot of things. They announced, for example—and I love this quote—that incoming cruise ships would be put directly under the command of the Australian Border Force. And that announcement was incredibly powerful—unless you were a cruise ship, because, for cruise ships, nothing changed. And the public came straight off the Ruby Princess. And what was the Prime Minister's response? Not, 'Well, I announced it and it was meant to happen.' Blame the states—blame someone else. Always find someone else to blame.

The announcements have become more elaborate. In the arts portfolio that I've got, we had the announcement where they even got celebrities there. They went to the theatre with the empty chairs. And a hundred days later: not a dollar spent.

I don't want to be too critical of this, because, at one level, I do find the minister for communications—like, I want to encourage him. I just want to encourage him. There used to be a comedian called Elliot Goblet whose entire style of humour was to have zero personality—a complete monotone. And this bloke's really got it nailed! What he did with the arts announcement was: he spent months telling us there was not a problem. He then made the big announcement, delivered nothing, and then returned to saying: 'There's not a problem.' But nothing quite comes to the fore. I did feel—I think we all felt a little bit—for the Deputy Prime Minister today.

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