Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

and Senator Conroy’s children will be saddled with this new Labor debt, which will see every Australian slugged $9,500 as we have to live with the consequences of this reckless and poorly thought out package.

The coalition, of course, as disciplined and responsible economic managers, are not unmindful of the economic circumstances that do call for a careful, thoughtful and well-targeted stimulus. And we do accept that there is a good case for a stimulatory package. Our concern about the $42 billion spend is at least threefold. Firstly, it is simply too big, and the government has failed to establish why $42 billion is the appropriate figure. Why is it $42 billion as opposed to $41 billion, $30 billion or $24 billion for that matter? There is a whiff of panic, a whiff of the knee-jerk about the size of this package, with absolutely no guarantee that it will work. In fact, the Prime Minister very carefully said that he did not know whether it would work. He said that there was no silver bullet. It appears that the only silver bullet is pointed at the coalition’s head unless we suddenly agree to this hysterical need advocated by Labor to pass this enormous package within 24 hours.

We know that the downturn may be very long lasting and Australia simply cannot afford to spend larger and larger sums like this every quarter. Let me illustrate: one per cent of GDP was already spent in an ineffectual cash splash of $10.4 billion in the December quarter and there will be another one per cent of GDP in just cash handouts alone from this package in the March quarter. The Prime Minister has already admitted that he does not know if this will work. Committing to $42 billion when you simply do not know what the future holds is shooting in the dark.

The second concern is the very poor quality of this spend. This will obviously take us some time to work through, but we believe that our main focus should of course be jobs, jobs and jobs. We have been saying that since last year and we have been consistently saying it, and Labor has now caught up and started talking about the impact on jobs. Disappointingly, even with reckless cash handouts and massive debt fuelled spending, the Prime Minister’s package predicts unemployment will top seven per cent in just over one year. That is another 300,000 out of work when we are looking down the barrel of another $42 billion stimulatory spend. And where are the 70,000 jobs promised by the government as a result of the $10.4 billion cash splash? They did not eventuate. And we know that the most that they will now say is that this package will support jobs. We have heard the weasel words that have now morphed from one package with which we were supposed to be looking at the creation of jobs to another with which we are simply ‘supporting’ jobs with a vastly increased spend. It adds to the fear and to the perception that this is a government that does not know what it is doing.

Thirdly, we believe that there are far more targeted responses that will do more for jobs, for employment creation, for small business, for the economy and for Australian families than those that have been contemplated in this package. What we have seen from Labor over the past couple of days is nothing short of manufactured hysteria over the timing of this package. We believe very clearly that it is our duty to carefully scrutinise the package and to discuss more effective ways to achieve a stimulus.

We know that our decision to oppose the package will not be a popular decision; it is a hard decision. We know that the Prime Minister has never taken a tough decision, but we have and we know all about standing up for the rights of Australians and being careful fiscal managers. We understand what debt means, we understand that debt needs to be repaid and we understand the burden on Australian families.