Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Youth and Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Is the Treasurer aware that the 2006 ABS census figures show that over half a million households, or one in three Australian households that rent, are now paying more than 30 per cent of their gross household income in rent payments? Does the Treasurer agree, despite these record high rentals, with the statement: ‘Working families in Australia have never been better off’?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me say that this government has put in place measures which have improved benefits for families. Just to give you some idea of the improvements that have been put in place, I think the family tax benefit today is about double what it was in 1996. The family tax benefit has delivered real improvements to families in our society. And, of course, not only has the family tax benefit increased but we have a $600 annual payment of family tax benefit—

Government Members:

Government members—Real money!

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

which is real money and goes into people’s bank accounts and helps them with their bills. The honourable member for Sydney, if she had had her way, would have abolished that payment. That was Labor’s policy at the last election. There is no point shaking your head, Member for Sydney; it was your policy at the last election and if you had been elected Labor would have taken that payment away. In fact, if Labor had had their way, after the last election they would have actually increased tax for single-income families and made them worse off.

So one thing I can say is this: not only has the family tax benefit been of great assistance to families and helped them with their bills but, if it had been left to Labor, families would be worse off today. The other thing I can say is this: nothing helps families like getting a member of a family in a job. If a family does not have a job then a family does not have a stake in the real economy. I think, when you look back and you see that over 200,000 new jobs have been created in the last year, when you look at the fact that real wages have increased by about 20 per cent, you would say to yourself, ‘This has given hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in families in Australia the opportunity to improve their position.’ That is what the coalition has been about: improving benefits to families and giving families a stake in this great country.

David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister provide some further information to the House as to how Australian working families benefit from disciplined economic management? Is the Prime Minister aware of any differing approaches to managing the economy?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Wakefield, who represents very effectively in this House thousands of working families in the electorate of Wakefield, that his concern for working families has been very strong and evident in the more than 2½ years that he has been a member of this parliament. I notice in every speech that is made by the Leader of the Opposition and every speech that is made by a prominent member of the Labor Party that there is a professed concern for working families. I therefore want to take the concern of the Leader of the Opposition at face value and remind him that his concern for working families has been well listened to by this government and that over the last 11½ years the number of families in work has dramatically increased. We now have the lowest unemployment rate in Australia for 33 years.

In the 12 months to June this year, the long-term unemployment rate in Australia—that is the number of people out of work for more than one year—fell by no less than 29 per cent. Not only is the level of long-term unemployment at its lowest since the statistic began to be kept but there cannot be any period of a year since that statistic was separately kept when the long-term unemployment rate would have fallen by such a sharp figure.

There can be only one explanation for that. The explanation is that the government’s new workplace relations system, which the Labor Party, directed to do so by the union movement, will dismantle if it wins the next election, has made it easier for small business to take on more staff. There can be no other explanation because, while over the last number of years there has been a steady decline in the number of long-term unemployed, for it to fall by no less than 29 per cent in the space of a year must at the very least owe an enormous amount to our industrial relations policy and owe an enormous amount to the removal of the unfair dismissal laws which Labor is pledged to bring back.

In answering questions asked by the Leader of the Opposition earlier, I made the observation that, even after the most recent interest rate rise, interest rates on housing loans in Australia, at 8.3 per cent, will be a full 4½ per cent lower than the average during the 13 years of the previous government. On an average mortgage of $235,000, a home owner would have paid on average $1,416 a month in mortgage payments under the current government, compared to $2,497 a month if the average rate under the former government still applied. That is a difference of $1,081. Real wages of Australian workers have risen by 20.8 per cent over the last 11 years and only the top 40 per cent of Australian households pay net income tax when you take into account the impact of family tax benefits. Finally, research by the OECD shows Australia has one of the fairest and most redistributive tax and income support systems in the OECD.

All of those things give the lie to the warnings that were given more than a decade ago that a coalition government led by me would dismantle the social security safety net. The member for Wakefield asked me what the alternatives are. The real alternative to this general level of prosperity for working families—although, I acknowledge, not all of them are sharing to the full the bounty of current prosperity—the biggest single threat is rolling back our industrial relations reforms. Rolling back those reforms will, in the opinion of Econtech, cost us 300,000 jobs, increase interest rates by 1.4 per cent and reintroduce the unwanted thuggery of union bosses into many workplaces. But, worse than all of that, they will send a signal to the Australian community and the rest of the world that this country has lost the stomach for long-term reform. Today’s prosperity is a product of yesterday’s reforms and, if we abandon today’s reforms, the prosperity of tomorrow will be put at risk.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to the Treasurer. Why did the Treasurer, in his last answer, refuse to support and repeat the Prime Minister’s statement that ‘working families in Australia have never been better off’?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I said in answer to the last question, families’ positions have improved significantly through the improvement of the family tax benefit system, job opportunities and real wages. I do not think that can be disputed. I do not think it can be disputed that families today, through the introduction of family tax benefit parts A and B, are better off than they were in 1996. I do not think this can be disputed either—that if Labor had won the last election they would be worse off today than they are now. I do love getting questions from the member for Lilley because it was the member for Lilley who thought up the idea of docking every family $600 a year in family tax benefit. When the member for Werriwa went to him and asked, ‘How do we explain docking families $600 of their family tax benefit?’ the member for Lilley advised him, ‘Tell ’em it’s not real; tell ’em it ain’t so, Joe. That $600 that goes into their bank accounts just does not exist.’ Coming, as he does, from the background of state secretary of the ALP in Queensland where he specialised in dirty tricks as part of his campaign armoury—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, a point of order on relevance: it is nine words, Treasurer. Do you support or will you oppose—

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lilley will resume his seat. The member for Lilley asked the Treasurer a question relating to a previous answer. The Treasurer is in order.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The nine words I like are, ‘Wayne Swan had money in brown paper bags.’ Were they the nine words? I do not have any trouble saying them, Mr Speaker. In fact, I think there ought to be an investigation.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is eight words.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eight words—‘Mr Wayne Swan had money in brown paper bags.’

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer will refer to members by their electorates.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He said it was only eight, Mr Speaker. Here is an interesting question. If you are the brother of the Leader of the Opposition you get expelled from the Labor Party for giving money to the Liberal Party. What if you happen to be a state secretary who gave money to the Australian Democrats?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: this is about the nine words that will not pass the Treasurer’s lips.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. As I reminded the member for Lilley, the question relates to an answer previously given by the Treasurer.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The attempt at the last election by the member for Lilley to pretend that $600 that is paid to every family per annum per child—and now of course it has been indexed, so if you add three children it will be $1,800 plus indexation—did not exist was up there with one of the great howlers of Australian politics. It comes from a long line of machine politics in which he was schooled in the state of Queensland, and Australian families would be far worse off if the Australian Labor Party ever found its way into office.