James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Hume, of course, for providing us with this important opportunity to debate the welfare of the people of Australia and this government's poor effort in addressing their serious and genuine concerns. Regrettably, again today there was more economic data showing just how tough Australians are doing it. Whilst it was regrettable to see today's GDP numbers, they were in line with what everyone was expecting, because, as numbers of parliament, if you speak to your constituents, you'll be hearing a pretty regular catalogue of tough circumstances that they're facing right now and have been for some time. In fact, pretty much since this government came to power, Australians have been doing it tougher and tougher.

Of course, previous speakers from the opposition have talked about the ever-exploding household budget and how difficult it is for people to make ends meet. Whether it's their mortgages going up, their rents going up, utilities or grocery prices, they are having a real, meaningful impact on decisions people have to make around the kitchen table, cancelling family holidays they can't take this year, because they have to tighten their belts. They have to make sacrifices because, under this government, their costs are dramatically increasing. But what are their government doing while they're tightening their belts? Regrettably, it's the complete opposite. Over the last two weeks, we've had the usual entertaining spectacle of Senate estimates, and that has revealed some very interesting priorities that this government has. They're certainly not behaving like the people of Australia have to behave at the moment.

I think one of the most remarkable to me is the dramatic increase in the size of the public sector, with 36,000 more public servants in the coming financial year, compared to the last financial year of the previous government. That's a 15 per cent increase. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth of Australia—because don't forget these figures don't include uniformed defence personnel—will be employing more than 200,000 people. We estimate that cost is almost $24 billion over the forward estimates. So this government is spending an extra $24 billion on public servants. Not many constituents that you speak to in your electorates, when they talk about the sorts of sacrifices that they are making, would be expecting their government to be making decisions like that.

The Electoral Commissioner was asked to update us on the cost of the referendum we held last year. The commissioner made it clear that he was expecting the cost of the referendum to come in at around about the same cost as the last federal election. Well, the last federal election cost $522 million, so it looks like that referendum is going to cost half a billion dollars—something that the people of this country absolutely pole-axed at the ballot box, that never needed to occur and instead the government and Prime Minister pig-headedly insisted on pursuing. It looks like he's torched more than half a billion dollars on that referendum for the people of this country to say resoundingly they did not want what the Prime Minister was offering them.

We see across all departments, with an election year looming, all this expenditure on government advertising, whether it's advertising tax cuts that happen automatically; advertising the 'Made in Australia' program, which my friend the member for Casey has sensibly renamed the 'Made in America' program thanks to the most significant decision they've made so far being the PsiQuantum computing investment. There's nearly a billion bucks across the Australian and Queensland governments going toward a non-Australian venture. So there is the 'Made in America' policy of this government, which they're spending $54 million advertising to the people of this country in the next financial year, which happens to be an election year. I don't know if there are too many people watching the State of Origin tonight or who watch the nightly news that need to see ads about the 'Made in America' program of this government, because no Australian seems to be able to get any access to it, but it's clearly an attempt by the government to try to look like they're doing things about the serious concerns that the people of this country have, because the opinion pollsters are in there, telling the campaign hierarchy this government's got some problems and, if you can't actually solve any problems, which you've proved over the last two years, let's at least try to look like we're doing it. The best way to do that is to put nearly $200 million into taxpayer funded advertising in an election year. That's what this government's focused on.

Thank you to the member for Hume for the opportunity of this debate. I only wish it was one the government would listen to and then actually focus on doing something practical and tangible for the people of this country.

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