Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the fact that the government's total call on taxpayers, including tax borrowings and dividends, for the 2011-12 year, was 25.7 per cent of GDP—higher than for any year of the Howard government. Why does the Prime Minister insist that the government is not collecting enough revenue when it is collecting more than $70 billion extra in taxes this year and spending almost $100 billion more than in the last year of the Howard government?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the form of the question the Leader of the Opposition once again verifies—in case there was any doubt—that he doesn't know anything about economics and he doesn't know anything about the government's budget. He is following the shadow Treasurer into error here. It was the shadow Treasurer who first started trying to retail these figures, where he put together apples and oranges and pretended they were the same thing. It is nonsense when it comes out of the mouth of the shadow Treasurer and it is nonsense when it comes out of the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition.

I would refer the Leader of the Opposition to the fact that, as a percentage of GDP, tax is lower under this government than it was under the Howard government—that is a fact. Of course we know that the Leader of the Opposition does not to like to confront facts which do not reinforce his prejudices—but that is a fact.

I would also remind the Leader of the Opposition of another fact he frequently chooses to forget. The world has confronted the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. That is a fact. It cannot be denied—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No point screeching and carrying on about it: that is a fact. And there are millions and millions of working people around the world who are now in the despair of unemployment because that financial crisis happened and because it had consequences in the real economy, the global economy and the economies of nations.

That means that our nation, at a time of global financial crisis—and think about those words carefully: global financial crisis—had to confront a few choices. First and foremost, what was going to happen, and what did happen because of the global financial crisis, was that there was going to be a huge hit to government revenues. The Leader of the Opposition likes to forget that. And, indeed, revenues have not recovered in the way the Treasury predicted. The Leader of the Opposition likes to forget that. That fact of course was always going to put pressure on the budget; it was always going to cause a deficit to arise. The Leader of the Opposition should have the honesty to acknowledge that.

And then this government took the responsible position of putting jobs, opportunity and growth first; of making sure that a couple of hundred thousand Australians could stay in employment. I respect that the Leader of the Opposition made the opposite choice. He would have preferred to have seen those Australians unemployed. We did not; we supported their jobs and we are proud that we did. The Leader of the Opposition has to get out of economics kindy class and start dealing with the facts. (Time expired)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister seriously maintain that government borrowings are not ultimately a call on the taxpayer?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The problems with the pre-drafted supplementary are that you don't listen to the answer, you don't try to think about the answer, you don't respond to the answer and you don't process the economic conclusions yourself—you have to go with the precooked script.

The Leader of the Opposition needs to answer this question: what does he say his strategy would have been at the time of the global financial crisis? We know he voted against jobs. What does he say the consequences would have been—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Prime Minister will return to the question.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

for the government's budget if he had been Prime Minister and voted against jobs. The consequences of course would have been that we would have seen the hit to revenues from the global financial crisis, we would have seen the problem with revenue recovery that we are seeing now, we would have seen more Australians unemployment and we would have seen lower growth—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Prime Minister will return to the question.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is centrally on the question. The Leader of the Opposition tries to create this fantasy land to pretend that the global financial crisis and its consequences for the government's budget did not happen. It is a furphy. It is the sort of thing one would only put forward if one had no understanding of or capacity to deal with the facts and no interest in economics—and, unfortunately, that is the Leader of the Opposition.