George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely. We are always the ones who have to clean up the mess after Labor governments have destroyed the country’s fiscal position. But, nevertheless, what a difference a year makes! Mr Acting Deputy President, did you know that last Saturday it was 62 weeks since the change of government? It was 62 weeks since Mr Howard and his ministers—since I and Senator Mason—surrendered the seals of office and 62 weeks since the responsibility for the management of the Australian economy was placed in the hands, as it should have been as a result of a wonderful democratic process, of the Australian Labor Party.

In 62 weeks what has been the result? I can tell you, because the day before yesterday in the House of Representatives the Treasurer, Mr Swan, and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Mr Tanner, tabled the Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook projects that by 2008-09 the budget will have moved into deficit to the tune of $22.5 billion, a reversal of the nation’s fiscal position of more than $40 billion in a year. In 62 weeks there has been a reversal of the country’s fiscal position of some $43 billion—that is, not quite a billion dollars a week. It took the Hawke and Keating governments 13 years to accumulate $96 billion of debt. It has taken the Rudd government little more than a year to accumulate half that already and to reverse the nation’s fiscal position by half that much already. And the Labor Party asks, ‘Why is it that you Liberals are going to vote against this so-called economic stimulus strategy?’ The reason we are going to vote against it is to protect the national interest from a Labor government gone crazy, a Labor government gone mad with its addiction to spending and borrowing as the only tool of economic management.

We do not say that there should not be stimulation of the economy to deal with the current downturn. Mr Turnbull in his statement to the nation last night and in his interviews on The 7.30 Report and other programs indicated measures which the Liberal Party—the party that can be trusted with the prudent management of the economy were we today in power—would have implemented. It would have implemented, in particular, tax cuts so that people could project forward what their savings would be and might thereby be encouraged to change their household budgets and elevate their expenditure rather than merely pay off debt and not contribute that money into the circular flow of the currency. So we do not say there should not be a stimulus. What we say is that the magnitude of this package is reckless and the targeting of the package is wrong.

There are two fallacies—two lies—that have been put about by Labor Party politicians to try and justify this reckless expenditure, this policy decision which will cripple our children and perhaps our grandchildren with debt. The first of those fallacies, which was articulated among others by the Prime Minister when he stood up in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, pale-faced, panic stricken and petulant, to announce these measures, is that the reversal of the budget position is the result of the decline in the government’s revenue because of the economic slowdown.

The Prime Minister’s claim is belied by his own government’s document, the Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook, because those with a taste for drilling into the detail of these documents will find, on page 40 in table 4.2, ‘Reconciliation of Australian Government General Government Sector Underlying Cash Balance Estimates’, a disaggregation of the extent to which the deterioration of the budget position is due to policy decisions of this government and is due to a decline in the revenue. What table 4.2 tells us is that taxation receipts estimates have been revised down by $9.5 billion in 2008-09, while the effect of policy decisions in the so-called stimulus package is recorded as $18.037 billion. That is in addition to the $10 billion economic stimulus package announced in December, which many consider was largely ineffective.

So the value of the policy measures—the decisions made by the Australian government in the last 2½ months—has been the expenditure of $28 billion. The effect of the decline of the revenue has been $9 billion. Let us not let the Labor Party get away with the lie that the budget has been driven into deficit by a decline in the revenue. Overwhelmingly, by a factor of more than three to one, the budget has been driven into deficit by advertent policy decisions made by Mr Rudd, Mr Swan and Mr Tanner. The second fallacy that is propagated by the Labor Party and in particular by Mr Rudd is that the reason these extreme measures are necessary is the global financial crisis—in which, so they say, Australia stands in the same position as every other Western nation. That is not so. The global financial crisis was generated by imprudent lending practices and deficient regulatory requirements within the United States of America. It was a problem that emerged from the United States of America, in particular from the so-called subprime housing market, and was propagated to other Western economies, including Australia’s.