Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise tonight to talk in the adjournment debate about the topic of the day, and that is the big spending, high taxing Labor budget. Last night, the Treasurer said this was a Labor budget, and not a truer word has been said. He was right. This is a very Labor budget: a massive budget deficit, soaring to $50 billion this financial year, $22 billion in the bill we will have to vote on in this House, and a blow-out from the projections in MYEFO of $9.6 billion. Net debt is peaking at over $100 billion, a shameful record for this Treasurer to have, and remaining above $100 billion in the forward estimates. This amounts to a bill for every single Australian of $4,700. Interest repayments are $5.5 billion in 2011-12 and climbing to $7.5 billion in 2014-15, or around $20 million a day. Labor is now borrowing $135 million a day to fund its reckless spending. As Alan Kohler said last night after the budget was handed down—an economist the Treasurer did not quote today—'Any decent CFO would be embarrassed by this budget.' Of course, the Treasurer takes the role of CFO in the government.

This is definitely a Labor budget. How did we get here? The Labor Party will blame all sorts of other factors but they were handed a $20 billion surplus, no net debt and money in the bank when they came to government in 2007. The Treasurer uses every excuse to justify these horrendous figures, why he has taken the budget from a position of $20 billion strength to a position of over $100 billion net debt and deficit. The main reason why the federal budget is producing such ugly figures is the wasteful, reckless spending of this government. We heard from the member for Paterson earlier about one of those examples of the mismanagement of this government, the failed programs and the bad policy decisions. Building the Education Revolution, or the school halls debacle, was a $1.7 billion blow-out with up to $8 billion wasted. The home insulation disaster—$2.4 billion wasted and mismanaged and homes being burnt down. The Solar Homes program—$850 million wasted. The Green Loans program, which became Green Start before being dumped altogether—$300 million wasted. Tax bonus payments—$46 million wasted, with money being sent to people overseas, criminals and people who had passed away. Grocery Choice—$8 million spent on a website that delivered nothing and was eventually shut down. The 2020 Summit—$2 million wasted on a great big talkfest. Labor has learnt nothing from its first term policy stuff-ups and budget blow- outs.

Even in the Treasurer's fourth budget, he continues to waste money. Since coming to power, Labor has employed 24,000 additional public servants. The government is asking the Australian people to tighten their belts, but it is refusing to do the same itself. They say they are cutting $2 billion from family payments to bring the budget back to surplus, but $1.75 billion of this money will disappear to pay for the boats failure thanks to Labor's failed border protection policies. We only need to look at these figures to see that Labor's failed border protection policies are now impacting on Australian family budgets. We see that in my electorate on a daily basis with the obscene waste associated with the Inverbrackie detention facility. The Treasurer is giving $10 million to the unions to build a new website. This is just more wasteful spending. While the government might claim that savings in this budget are $22 billion, they will actually spend $19 billion of it. Out of the $22 billion in savings, almost half is made up of levies imposed on ordinary Australians.

Labor is addicted to spending. It lacks the courage to make the tough decisions, and Australian families are now paying the price of Labor's waste and mismanagement and its failed policies and policy implementation. Instead of cutting waste and making the hard decisions in this budget, Labor has stripped $2 billion from Australian families by freezing indexation of key family tax payments and income thresholds—as I remarked earlier, all to pay for the failed boats policy. The government is hitting Australian families and the economy with more than $6 billion in new taxes and higher charges. At the same time, electricity prices are up by 51 per cent, grocery prices are up by 14 per cent, education and health costs are up by 20 per cent and petrol prices are on their way up and up. Families are being hit, taxes are being raised and services are being cut. This is a very Labor budget.