Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During this term of government, we have seen the worst economic crisis in 75 years. We saw financial systems, banks and the world economic system at risk of epic failure. That had terrible consequences for jobs in places like the United Kingdom and the United States of America. We saw terrible pain among the working-class and middle-class communities in those countries. And we see ongoing pain today in the British budget brought down by the new Conservative government. It lifts consumption taxes to 20 per cent. We can see some indication of how conservatives handle both recessions and recoveries from recessions: they tax the poor to give company tax cuts to corporate citizens.

Our government is different. Our government believes in restoring the budget to surplus three years early. We are going to halve peak debt. We are going to restore the public finances in a responsible way after avoiding recession and saving 200,000 Australian jobs. Most importantly, we have a plan to add to national private savings. The resources super profits tax builds infrastructure in mining communities and mining states like Western Australia, Queensland and my own state of South Australia. It lowers company taxes for small business and for businesses overall. Most importantly, it lifts national savings through lifting superannuation.

Increased superannuation for individual workers can have a very big effect. It is projected that a 30-year-old full-time worker will have around $108,000 extra in their superannuation under these changes. That makes a very big difference to those working Australians who so desperately want a dignified retirement. Most importantly, in aggregate this will add around $500 billion to the existing pool of superannuation savings, increasing our national savings by 0.4 per cent of GDP by 2035. That is an incredibly important thing to do. Over the long term, our great weakness has been a lack of national savings; our great weakness has been the current account deficit. By increasing superannuation and increasing the savings pool in this country, we will lower our reliance on overseas savings and put Australia on a path of economic independence. That is part of the great economic reform undertaken by this government: a responsible restoration of the public finances after a period of international recession and a responsible increase in the private savings of individuals to help national savings.

We have to contrast this with what the opposition would give us—what the Leader of the Opposition would have delivered had he been in government. What he would have delivered is recession, New Zealand style: five quarters of negative economic growth, with all consequences for working families that go along with it—hundreds of thousands of people out of work, in working-class communities like Elizabeth, which I represent, and in growing regional towns like Gawler. We would have seen misery and dole queues—that is what we would have seen. Instead, we have seen the government’s responsible economic management avoid the terrible price that is currently being paid by so many other countries.

Look what the opposition have delivered most recently through their control of the Senate. We see them in an unholy alliance with the Greens, in the other place. They have prevented action on climate change and they seek to prevent action in so many other areas. They have killed progress dead. They have frustrated and rejected the mandate of the Australian people in the 2007 election. They are the party of just saying no, of just not doing it. They are against progress in all its forms. We know that they are against the broadband network. I was out doorknocking in Craigmore and Hillbank over the weekend. These are people who are stuck on dial-up after a decade of policy failure by the Howard government—people who want broadband. Just this week, Senator Alan Ferguson put out a Tony Abbott pamphlet in my electorate which claimed that they would stop the broadband network. I do not think that is going to win any votes in Craigmore and I do not think that is going to win any votes nationally. That is the motto of the opposition: ‘Just don’t do it.’ A vote for the Leader of the Opposition would equal recession, would equal another decade of delay on climate change—because he thinks it is not real—and would equal another decade of delay on broadband. People in Craigmore and Hillbank would be left on dial-up under an Abbott government.