Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

They are your figures, so you deal with your Treasury and Finance statisticians and you tell them why they are wrong, because their statistics clearly do not measure up with the story you want to tell the Australian people about what is happening to Work Choices.

But let us talk about what the government have failed to do. They have failed to wisely invest the proceeds of the resources boom. They try to dismiss it. As Senator Evans said, there was no mention of the mining and resources boom in the Treasurer’s speech. Let us look at the facts, though. Saul Eslake of the ANZ has stated that the resources boom is responsible for an estimated $283 billion increase to federal government tax revenues above its original estimates over the 2002-03 to 2009-10 period. That is $283 billion more flowing into federal government coffers than previously and over the forward estimates period, and yet we have a situation where their own forecasts are zero per cent productivity growth for the 2006-07 year. That is the reality.

Since MYEFO alone, an additional $53 billion has flowed into government coffers above what the original estimates were. That is the reality of the impact of the resources boom on government revenue. That is a good thing. But what is not a good thing is your failure in previous years, in particular, to invest in the Australian economy in terms of long-term productivity. Where has your investment in education been until the electorate and the opposition started talking up this education revolution? That is what this budget is about. It is responding to political pressure. All of a sudden in an election year, after having cut investment in universities and in R&D, in 1996 and onwards, as a proportion of GDP, magically you wake up to the fact that education investment is important to Australia’s economic future. And do you know what? Australians are alive to this. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.