Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is very strange, isn't it? It's difficult to know what the chamber is expected to make of this motion. The member opposite has been here for a few months now, and they talk of him as a future Prime Minister. Quietly, they talk of him as a future Prime Minister, possibly the next Liberal Prime Minister.

An opposition member: Hear, hear!

Why, you might ask? Well, he can talk in full sentences—the bar's pretty low! He doesn't seem too extreme, as we heard from his measured, reasonable, statesmanlike tone. He impersonates a normal person. But then he goes and does something really weird like this. He moves a motion, bringing on a debate, praising the Morrison government's economic management. I mean, seriously? It's been six months since the election, and we get the shock-horror routine: wages are too low; electricity and gas costs are too high; the cost of living is out of control. Well, I'll give a tip to the new member, the future Prime Minister, over there: a big advantage he has in his quest is that he was not a member of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison circus. Own that. Don't be doing silly things, moving motions trying to defend their incompetence.

I should say sorry, also, for tagging you as a future Prime Minister, because Josh Frydenberg was a future Prime Minister. What happened to Josh? Where'd he go! Dave Sharma, my friend Dave, was a future Prime Minister. He lasted a term. Tim Wilson was a future Prime Minister—according to Tim Wilson!—so it's a dangerous moniker to own.

But, seriously, this is ridiculous. If the Liberals' record of economic management is success, I'd hate to see failure, Member for Menzies. We have a trillion dollars of Liberal debt with no economic dividend to show for it. Perhaps the biggest slur that you could make at a government facing a crisis is, 'They let a good crisis go to waste.' Yes, as you said, the former government spent money on JobKeeper, and $20 billion of JobKeeper—now in the national debt for the next generation to repay—was paid to companies to increase their profits. Well done, Liberal Party!

The economic record that the Liberals left after a decade in office was falling real wages, and they can't hide behind COVID. If you look at the OECD, wages were falling even before COVID. The Liberal record before COVID was 0.7 per cent negative wage growth, the third-lowest in the OECD. It was the worst decade for productivity growth in 50 years. In 2013, when Labor left office, we were 10th highest in the OECD. By the end of the Liberals, before COVID, in 2018, we were negative on productivity growth and fifth last in the OECD. They turn around and they hate these facts, but they're facts from the Parliamentary Library. That's the Liberals' economic record even before we got to COVID.

They covered up power price rises before the election. They actually changed the law to hide the truth of what was coming down the pipe after 23 energy policies they had over a decade—and they couldn't agree on one of them. They failed to invest in skills to prepare the economy for this moment. Who knew? You cut $3 billion from TAFE and trash the apprenticeships system, and then you get an economic spurt and there's no apprentices and no-one with skills, and employers are screaming out for migrants. We had a decade of wasted opportunities and warped priorities.

The Nationals leader said that the budget position that the former government left was a gift to the nation. Nearly $1 trillion of Liberal debt—that's a gift? I'd hate to get his Kris Kringle! The government's budget delivers on our election commitments: responsible cost-of-living relief without putting upward pressure on inflation; cheaper medicines, cheaper child care and more affordable housing; and beginning the hard yards, the long, hard road ahead, of budget repair.

I was told by the contribution of the member for Menzies that the government was engaged in 'reckless spending'—straight from the talking points of Liberal Party propaganda they read out on Sky News. It's reckless spending, apparently. Well, adult government is back. Let's deal in facts. Unlike the Liberals and the Nationals, we did not spend the record commodity income boom in this budget. Yes, the terms of trade have improved. Yes, there's money flowing into the budget for the next couple of years from commodities. We spent one per cent of that. That's a fact—a Parliamentary Budget Office fact. We should deal in facts. What did the Morrison government spend? 60 per cent of the commodity boom revenue that came in. What did John Howard spend—that great hero who baked in the middle-class welfare, the structural budget deficit? It all stems from Howard's days. He spent 70 per cent of the commodity boom. Let's be very clear. If this government behaved like the former government in its budget, we would have 1.4 per cent higher interest rates. If that's the record that you're promoting, I suggest you try again and get a better motion.

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