Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the fiction that Senator McGauran and his colleagues are trying to create. They have been in charge of the economy and they are saying, ‘Oh, it’s all fine.’ The shadow Treasurer is trying to tell the Australian people, ‘There’s nothing wrong; we left it all in good condition.’ But the fact of the matter is that the Reserve Bank and all other commentators are talking about the significant capacity problems, the skills crisis in the economy, capacity constraints, infrastructure problems, inflation problems, low productivity and 11 interest rate rises in a row under the former government—the government that promised to keep inflation at record lows.

This is the economy which they would have Australians believe is in good shape after their stewardship. They have the temerity to then come in here with this proposition. It is understandable why they would not have wanted it to be on the Notice Paper for too long. They finish the proposition by calling on Labor’s razor gang to ensure that no Australian will be worse off when the budget will be delivered in May. For years, they refused to guarantee to the Australian workforce that no worker would be worse off under their industrial relations legislation. For years, they maintained that that was not necessary. Only in the shadows of their defeat did they come to the conclusion that they had to go back to a no disadvantage test. Then they bungled that and a massive bureaucratic arrangement had to be faced by employers who had AWAs before them. There is a mess out there that was created by their industrial relations system which this government will correct.

That is the disaster that the former government imposed on this country. For Senator McGauran, those opposite and the shadow Treasurer to suggest that there is not a problem demonstrates just how out of touch they still are. They were out of touch at the last election, and that is why the Australian people got rid of the coalition. They remain out of touch. What more do you need to be convinced that they remain out of touch than to have heard the last contribution from Senator McGauran? I have seen senators come in here with various aids, but I have not seen many stand there reading from a newspaper on the lectern as part of their contribution to the debate. Perhaps that is because they are generating nothing and the newspapers are creating some ideas that may be useful to them. That is a good thing, because clearly they do need ideas. They clearly need someone to tell them what the real facts are. They need someone to come in and tell them that there is a problem in the economy, that there is something that needs to be attended to and that in fact this government is attending to the problems that their government was part of creating.

We have the legacy the former government left for the Australian people in the highest inflation in 16 years, fuelled by their reckless spending. This Labor government has made it clear that we need a new era of fiscal discipline to take Australia forward to combat the scourge of inflation. It is, as Mr Swan has said, public enemy No. 1 to our government. Inflation hurts working families, puts upward pressure on interest rates, erodes living standards, harms businesses, threatens our future prosperity and threatens job creation. This government is committed to a budget surplus of at least 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2008-09, a concrete demonstration of our commitment to fiscal restraint—unlike the previous government, which had a record of profligate spending, a growth in spending of—