Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A couple of weeks ago I was thumbing my way through the Financial Review, as I do on a daily basis, when on page 38 I saw a news item that left me gobsmacked. It was headlined 'Swan in line to be national Treasurer'. It turns out that a certain magazine might be planning to give the Treasurer of Australia its Finance Minister of the Year award. I confess I found this to be an implausible concept and I wondered whether the Fin had launched a new satire section—it was, after all, in the Rear Window section. I checked my calendar to see that it was not April Fools' Day. I then checked to see whether the award in question was being sponsored perhaps by Mad magazine, which we all fondly remembered from our childhood.

I finally discovered that the sponsoring magazine was the famous, or should I say in this case 'infamous', Euromoney magazine. I checked again to see who its editor was. As I indicated earlier, it might have been Alfred E Neuman from Mad magazine—maybe he had switched jobs—but no, it turns out, according to the Financial Review that Euromoney magazine is absolutely deadpan serious when it comes to considering the Treasurer of Australia for this award. We ask the question: for what? This Treasurer has driven the budget into deficit after deficit and has racked up more than $100 billion in debt over four short years, a mean feat after starting with nearly $45 billion in the bank. This Treasurer has presided over massive waste on all the programs we have seen, from the Julia Gillard memorial halls to the Home Insulation Program. Here is a Treasurer who is now apparently scheming to conduct a midnight raid on the Future Fund to desperately try to bring his budget into surplus. It will be his first surplus if he can manage to achieve it, albeit by artificial means. Naming the Australian Treasurer as finance minister of the year would be like giving an award for navigational excellence to the captain of the Titanic. The Treasurer is far more worthy of an award from the magicians guild for his smoke and mirrors tricks with government spending and far more deserving of a prize from the international association of carnival operators for the shell game he is running with the federal budget than he is of the Finance Minister of the Year Award.

Upon reflection, perhaps this award is not so surprising after all. Euromoney magazine will ring a bell for those with a memory in this place. It was the magazine that made former Treasurer Paul Keating finance minister of the year. After that award, Paul Keating presided over a million unemployed and the recession he said we had to have. By the time he left office he had plunged the country into massive debt—$96 billion in net government debt—and a $10 billion budget black hole. We should fear the prospect of the current Treasurer receiving the same award. With the history, we should be very afraid of what would follow if this Treasurer stayed in his job. Euromoney magazine claims that the award is based on input from many leading global bankers and investors. I wonder—I would certainly hope that those in the bureaucracy and in the Treasury would have better things to do than to spend time lobbying for the Treasurer's nomination, but we will find out the truth in the fullness of time, no doubt. Freedom of information requests and Senate estimates will no doubt reveal whether that is the case or not.

In concluding, if the Treasurer does end up getting this award it will trigger great national mirth and hilarity, because the only prize this Treasurer of Australia is worthy of is a booby prize.