Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Parry, I move:

That the Senate notes:

(a)

that many Australians are worse off today than they were in 2007;

(b)

that many Australians are experiencing difficulties due to increasing cost of living pressures; and

(c)

the Government’s failure to address these difficulties.

Whilst we call these types of discussions debates, there should really be no debate about this motion. I say that because there are some irrefutable facts. The motion reads firstly that many Australians are worse off today than they were in 2007. Even the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged this. He has said that Australians are worse off than they were under the previous government.

The list of ways in which they are worse off is extensive and it is felt by every family, by every carer, by every pensioner and by every child in this country. What does the Labor government do? It fiddles while Rome is burning. It has inquiries, it has reviews and then it does the Pontius Pilate and washes its hands of any responsibility. It passes the buck. It makes a mockery of the phrase ‘the buck stops with me’ that Mr Rudd trumpeted around so often in opposition. He has not mentioned it quite so frequently in government because he knows he leads a do-nothing government, a government all about spin and rhetoric and little about delivering tangible results.

The second part of this motion states that many Australians are experiencing difficulties due to increasing cost-of-living pressures. Once again, there can be no reasonable or coherent debate refuting this statement because the cost-of-living pressures that are affecting families, the mums and dads of Australia, those on fixed incomes, those reliant on pensions and carer payments and those in particular difficulties are eroding and eating away at their lifestyle, at their options and, in some instances, at their very ability to function above a stressful level.

The third part of this motion notes the government’s failure to address these issues. As hard as the members on the other side—the government—will try and refute this part of the motion, they really have done very little. They are in the process of having 150 inquiries, inquiries into inquiries and reviews. They have had summits. What they have not had is any coherent plan to resolve the financial crisis that the Australian people are being placed in by this government. Some of the examples which I and other speakers will give, and I am sure the government will put their best spin doctors on to refute, will be horrifying.

In my state of South Australia, we have a wonderful organisation called Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels today were forced to increase the price of all the meals that they supply to the thousands of pensioners and other people who are doing it tough, thereby eating into the fixed income of the single pensioner which this heartless government has refused to confront in its very first budget, a budget where they have attempted to plunder $23 billion from the Australian people—and for what purpose?

Was it to pay back debt? No, there was no government debt when they came into government. Was it to assist with additional measures? No, it was not, because they cut funding from important areas. They tried to cut one-off bonus payments to pensioners. They tried to slash programs, all the while squirreling away money that the Australian taxpayers have earned and so desperately need to compensate for the inactivity of this government. Inactivity might be a bit cruel because, as I have mentioned, they have had many reviews—150-plus reviews. They have created such meaningful venues for disseminating information as the ‘grocery watch’ website where, for the privilege of 13 million taxpayer dollars, the Australian public can now look at what prices were like in the good old days—a month ago—before they started to go up.

We have a government that is intent on looking in the rear-view mirror. After nine months of looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing how good things were, the great emperor himself decided yesterday to wander down to the Press Club and give his vision for the future. I thought the Australian people had heard Mr Rudd’s vision for Australia’s future in the election campaign last year, but he has realised that spin and rhetoric could only carry him through nine months and now he has had to enunciate another vision. It is another series of reviews; it is another Mythbusters. In fact, on this side of the chamber, I think we should get those people from Mythbusters in here because that is what we have to do. We have to continue to bust the myths that have been put out by the poison spin doctors in the government’s ranks.

The government come in here and say they have inherited a mess. It is simply not true. They have handed down a budget where they have plundered money from the Australian people that they need to spend—$22.8 billion. Mark my words: the budget surplus will be even higher again when the final figures are handed down because they are taxes of stealth. On this side of the chamber, we want to relieve this burden from people. We want to make sure that they have enough money with which to pay their bills. We want to ensure that people can make decisions with their money that are in the best interests of their own family because we believe that individuals are best placed to do this—not the collective wisdom, not the almighty combination of the union movement that now resides in the executive office.

This government is already having a profoundly negative impact on the Australian way of life. It is consumers that are feeling the pinch. It is small businesses that are feeling the pinch. It is employees—or should I say former employees—who are feeling the pinch because people are losing jobs as our economy slows down. It is an engineered slowdown—in fact, a swan dive—engineered by Mr Rudd and more than ably assisted by Mr Swan and the other comrades in the government that just want to take more money from the Australian people because they believe they, rather than the Australian people themselves, have the answers about what they should be spending their money on.

There is a problem when governments increase taxes, or take consistently more than they need to either protect the economy or to repay Labor’s financial ineptitude, such as we were forced to do when we inherited a $96 billion debt and a $10 billion black hole. We fixed all of that up and now we have a government that was elected under a mandate of saying they wanted 1.5 per cent of GDP as a surplus. Now in their first budget, they have upped that to nearly 2.3 per cent of GDP. That does not sound like much, but it is $6 billion or $7 billion a year. It is an enormous amount of money. They have increased spending programs on things they do not need to and ignored real need.

This is a government that has chosen not to give any additional money to pensioners outside of election commitments, which they aped off the coalition, but has decided to spend $100 million on marginal seat pork-barrelling. This could have helped Australians with their cost of living pressures. What have they done? Nothing about it at all. This is a government that really does not care. It is an extraordinary indictment on how far the Labor movement have fallen. When they get into power, they cannot help themselves. They can preach financial and fiscal responsibility, but when it comes to actually delivering, they cannot. They cannot do it because they are not designed for it. They are not equipped to deal with financial matters in an appropriate, open and transparent manner.

We have seen this on so many occasions. We have seen the myths put out by the Labor government not only about the alleged problems they inherited with the economy. We have seen Mr Rudd wash his hands of the ‘buck stops with me’ approach. We are going to hear a whole bunch of nonsense from people on the other side in a moment because there is no logical way they can say that Australians are not worse off today than they were a year ago. Even your own Prime Minister has said that. I would be very interested to hear Senator Hurley, Senator Hutchins and the other spear-carriers’ speeches. As I have said in this chamber once before, they are going to be overcooked asparagus spears that you are going to be throwing at us because they are going to have absolutely no penetration with the Australian public. Stand up and take responsibility for your own decisions later on rather than pass the buck.

The government also cannot dispute the fact that many Australians are experiencing difficulties today. You watch. They will trot out their compassion and their mantra, ‘But we have done all we can; we cannot help any more.’ That is what Mr Rudd said. He said:

… we have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget.

He has given up already. Mr Rudd, of course, being the leader of possibly the worst government in 30 years, said:

What I can say to carers and pensioners right across Australia—there is no way on God’s earth that I intend to leave them in the lurch.

Let me tell you: the carers and pensioners of Australia have been left in the lurch. They have been left in the lurch because where they have been relying on Meals on Wheels they now suddenly have to pay a little bit more. There has been no increase in the basic pension for them. The cost of living has gone up 4½ per cent. Many of them are now unable to drive their cars, or are unwilling to drive their cars, because the choice of putting petrol in the tank or having a meal is a very real and stark one. It is a cold and dark winter—