Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Bishop’s fine oratory cannot hide the facts of the matter. The facts of the matter are simply that this government has no idea what it is doing when it comes to the financial management of our country. That was exemplified today by the answers given by Senator Conroy. I do not want my discussion to be seen as a personal attack on Senator Conroy, who I quite like. I think he is a fine fellow. Not being from the Victorian Left, I guess I can say that. I bear him no personal ill will. But have a look at the answers today: poor Senator Conroy is completely out of his depth.

It is quite clear that Senator Lundy—a person who has had a long involvement in broadband and clearly understands it far better than Senator Conroy, with the mess he has got himself into—should have been the broadband and communications minister and Senator Sherry should be doing the Treasurer’s work. Senator Sherry could not be worse than Wayne Swan, with his appalling position last night on the ABC’s The 7.30 Report, or Lateline, was it, with Kerry O’Brien—Kerry it is, Wayne, not Terry. Poor old Mr Swan could not answer a question. He could not define how long this temporary downturn would be, the temporary deficit that the Labor Party have now admitted the government will have. As Senator Conroy said today, Mr Swan and Senator Conroy were standing by the midyear economic financial outlook projections. But already, two weeks later, they are resiling from them.

As I say, fine words from Senator Bishop, but what are the facts? The Labor Party claim that they are putting big money into this building fund and by spending the building fund that will indeed get the country out of the recession that it is heading towards. But this building fund that he talks about was totally and entirely the work of the previous government. The money came from T3, it came from last year’s surplus and it came from the telecommunications fund—all three funds set up by the previous government. So what the Labor government is now doing is spending the savings of the previous government to try and get the economy going.

I think most Australians were prepared to give Labor a bit of a go. They started off with a $22 billion surplus given by the previous government, but within a year that will disappear and we will be borrowing again. Those of us who have been around for a while sat through the years when Labor borrowed up to $96 billion. It was $96 billion the Labor Party had to borrow to try and keep Australia running. What happened when the coalition took over government? We did not have any fat to deal with. We had to start and pay off Labor’s $96 billion. Over six or seven long years we scrimped and saved, ran the economy well, got the economy into a positive economic outlook, created jobs and paid off Labor’s $96 billion debt. Could you imagine how this government would be today in the face of the economic downturn facing Australia if they had inherited a $96 billion deficit rather than a $22 billion surplus? Can you just imagine the state Australia would be in? When we took over in 1996, Labor left us huge double-digit unemployment and just about double-digit inflation, plus a $96 billion deficit. If they had been left with that in December last year, the country would be just about in ruins at the moment. Unfortunately, and I regret to say this, I, and I think increasingly every other Australian, have absolutely no confidence in Mr Rudd and Mr Swan in managing our economy.