Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, well, well. It is not really a surprise that this opposition is so gutless in its approach to Labor’s budget. We have a budget that has already been through two weeks of intense Senate estimates scrutiny. We have a process, a commitment and a mandate to take this budget through the Senate in the next fortnight, and now we have the Liberal Party deliberately vandalising the budget—it cannot be described as anything less than economic vandalism—by denying the government the capacity to maintain the revenue we need for our budget surplus but at the same time passing the aspects of the budget that will support communities. It is an exercise in the most blatant political gutlessness and economic vandalism that this place has ever seen. It is quite phenomenal to hear Senator Abetz—and no doubt there will be others—talk about arrogance and hubris, when we spent 11 years arguing with the opposition, the former government, about the rights of the Senate to scrutinise bills. I do not think there was ever an attempt at economic vandalism such as this by the former Labor opposition to undermine the then coalition government’s budget.

The Labor budget is all about putting downward pressure on inflation by making the sorts of provisions we need to make the Australian community a strong community—but most of all we need to maintain that surplus. It is an extraordinary feat, when you think about the balance that this budget has struck in a very tough economic climate. It is a climate that we inherited from the former government, knowing that inflation rose and rose and rose under the coalition government. We find ourselves today trying to manage the difficulty on behalf of those millions of Australians who are struggling with a mortgage. This is the legacy of the coalition government to the people of Australia. Today we have seen the opposition move motion after motion to defer aspects of revenue-raising bills that relate to our finely attuned budget by referring them to Senate committees, which will have the effect of denying Labor the opportunity to complete our budget in its holistic form.

The coalition, which once proudly claimed its economic credentials, is completely forgoing its purported legacy—which I certainly do not agree with anyway, given the state of the economy—in an absolutely cheapest of the cheap political stunt. Effectively what the coalition parties have told the people of Australia today is that the cheap politics they are prepared to deploy in this place are more important than Australian families and their ability to manage their mortgages. That is the core of the issue that we are debating here today. I am surprised at the coalition senators, but I suppose they have no choice but to come in here and try to take some assertive line with this, because they have no political cover. The whole world now can see the shallowness of any claim this lot have to any economic credentials at all. It is not about economic credentials, economic stability or forward thinking for this lot; it is about cheap political stunts.

As I mentioned, the Liberal Party is undermining our capacity to deliver the $22 billion surplus. The delay of these bills does have an immediate and direct effect on this surplus, and that will have the direct and immediate effect of putting upward pressure on inflation and interest rates. I think the actions by the coalition today will stand in history as having taken another great big swipe off the surface of any cover that they may have had in terms of their economic credentials. I suppose it is a taste of what is to become the character of the now opposition on the other side of this chamber.

It is also interesting to note that, since we know that the numbers in the Senate will be changing, it is not like this lot have got the courage of their convictions to actually vote against these measures in the forthcoming two weeks of debate. They do not want to do that; they just want to defer them. That is why we describe it as economic vandalism. It is not even about the courage of their convictions, because clearly they have none.