Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Being a good government is tough. It takes determination, discipline, persistence. It requires conviction and the courage to lead—not simply to be a slave to the latest focus groups.

Under this government, Australia is enjoying prosperity not experienced since World War II. Our unemployment rate is the lowest that it is been for 32 years, with a record 10.4 million people now employed in Australia. Employers are experiencing record low levels of industrial action. This has helped create a more productive economy. Australian employers and employees are getting on with the job. This is boosting wages and increasing productivity across all sectors of the economy. This is bad news for the Labor Party and for the Labor Party’s union bosses, but it is good news for Australia.

The recent federal budget was further proof of the benefits of the Howard government’s experienced economic management—tax cuts, a $500 bonus for pensioners, the superannuation co-contribution scheme, a balanced budget with a strong surplus. All of this was possible through the responsible financial management of this government.

There is another group of people—a rather dysfunctional group of people—purporting to be an alternative government of Australia. It is fronted by Mr Kevin Rudd and is backed by the extreme views of the unionists. Mr Rudd and his team are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian public. How else can we explain it? Mr Rudd says he is an old-fashioned Christian socialist on one day, and a short time later he denounces socialism as a discredited ideology. I am sure that statement will come as a great disappointment to the socialists on the front bench of the other side. Mr Rudd said that he is an economic conservative but he has voted against every prudent fiscal measure that has delivered such prosperity to our great nation. The Labor Party are happy to rip up AWAs yet profit from common law contracts.

Labor say they are not captive to the union movement, but they are installing their union bosses in their safest seats. The list of contradictions in Labor’s platform, policies and leadership could run for many pages. If we cannot rely on what they say, we can only rely on what they do and what they have done. We know of Labor’s federal history of 17 per cent interest rates, high unemployment, poor productivity, rampant industrial disputes. They gave us the recession we had to have—allegedly. Then there were the business bankruptcies. They gave us a country devoid of hope and optimism. In fact, it was ‘hard Labor’ for Australian families.

Mr Rudd would have us believe that he represents a different Labor Party. For an insight into what this means, we do not have to look any further than at the state Labor governments around Australia. As a proud South Australian, I lament the lack of vision and opportunity afforded to our state by the state Labor government. Labor Premier Mike Rann was part of a previous Labor government that nearly bankrupted South Australia. Now he is at it again. In South Australia net state debt is scheduled to grow tenfold over the next four years. Public sector debt is forecast to top $3.4 billion by 2011. That is still a way short of the last Labor legacy of an $11.6 billion deficit that was left after Labor’s state bank disaster during Premier Rann’s first attempt at being in government. This has been achieved despite receiving billions of dollars in additional revenue courtesy of the economic and tax reform of the federal government. State Labor—not content with their GST income—has seen fit to slug South Australian families with ever-increasing taxes and charges.

It is beyond belief that in these prosperous economic times—with more money than ever before flowing into the state governments, courtesy of this federal government—the Rann Labor government is increasing fares on public transport, increasing water supply charges, increasing motor vehicle registration. In South Australia we have got levies and stamp duty slugs and we have got no coherent plan for managing the future. So where has the money gone? It is a very good question. Quite simply, it has been squandered through appalling financial management and reckless spending. This has happened not just in one area but in all areas of state spending. State Labor budgeted in South Australia for an increase of 1,971 full-time public service positions, yet the actual increase was 12,065. This is not a one-off investment in frontline services—in police or teachers or nurses, which are important roles; this is an additional annual cost of $650 million every year, propping up a paper-shuffling bureaucracy.

This explains why the South Australian Labor government is one of the worst performers when it comes to investing in our state. In fact, the South Australian Minister for Transport, Mr Patrick Conlon, was recently quoted in the South Australian parliament’s Hansard as saying:

We believe one of the best ways to achieve funding for that road may well be to keep it as a local road and get onto one of the special project grants that are rolling out from the Commonwealth at the moment.

While Labor do the Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of their responsibilities—and they have done that for over five years—South Australia has recorded the smallest growth in infrastructure spending of all the mainland states. Over this time, our unfunded WorkCover liability has exploded to more than $1 billion. This is a disaster for injured workers and for South Australian employers, who are forced to pay the highest rate of workforce injury insurance in Australia. What is Mr Rann’s response to this crisis? Alarmingly, it is very much like Mr Rudd’s whenever he is faced with a crisis: he is going to convene a committee or hold a summit, have a review and determine a policy agenda after the federal election.

In South Australia this is going to cost taxpayers another $800,000 simply because the Rann Labor government is not prepared to make a decent decision. So while the federal Liberal government has been paying off Labor’s legacy of debt and putting surplus money away to meet our future liabilities, the state Labor governments are spending at a frightening rate. The real benefit of the economic management of the federal government to Australian families is being hampered by state Labor. In typical Labor fashion, they will leave a mess behind that only the Liberals are capable of clearing up.

South Australia has the highest unemployment rate in mainland Australia. Our growth forecast is the lowest of all mainland states. The Rann government is the highest-taxing government in South Australia’s history. We have underfunded superannuation liabilities of over $6.1 billion. We have a River Murray levy but no state government plan for water security. The Rann Labor government is not providing stamp duty relief for struggling homebuyers. Shamefully, they are the first South Australian government to collect more than $1,000 million in property taxes—land tax and stamp duties. Broken promises—this is Labor’s legacy. It is the same with federal Labor’s legacy. In South Australia the Rann Labor government has had $2.9 billion extra every single year that is being simply wasted.

Who can forget the mess that federal Labor left us after the Hawke-Keating governments finished in 1996—a $96 billion debt, a $10 billion annual deficit and a weakened national credit rating. The current state Labor governments are heading down exactly the same path as their federal and state predecessors. It is clear there is nothing different about the tax-and-spend attitude Labor held during the eighties and nineties and their current tax-and-spend policies. But do not take my word for it. The poor performance of the state Labor governments has even attracted the attention of the Menzies Research Centre, which recently published a report entitled State of the states. The report, by a distinguished international economist, is an examination of the typical Labor fundamentals: overspending, budget blow-outs, public servant salary increases, low productivity, low economic growth and low investment in infrastructure. The states have received record windfalls. Where is it going? There has been no noticeable improvement in service effectiveness. They have increased real expenditure but they have seen a decline in productivity.

According to the report, state taxpayers are getting less bang for their tax buck. But in the rare circumstances where state Labor have actually decided to make a decision to invest, their priorities have been simply wrong and subject to massive cost blow-outs. There is a $100 million blow-out on the Port River Bridge, an extra $25 million on government spin, and the cost of an important hospital redevelopment has exploded from $60 million to $317 million. The list of poor decisions, poor management and poor government from South Australia’s state Labor government is shameful. It is back to ‘hard Labor’ for the people of South Australia.

But let us not forget about how they love to tax. If a Rudd Labor government were elected federally, they could get together with their state comrades and change the level of the GST. Wall-to-wall Labor governments in Australia would make this a real and frightening possibility. We cannot afford a federal Labor government. I say to the good men and women of Australia: do not be fooled by the smokescreen of Mr Rudd; ignore the empty words and the focus group sound bites. Consider Labor on their record. It is a record this country simply cannot afford. (Time expired)