Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition supports stimulation, in this case of a fiscal kind, because the economy needs it. Australia needs stimulation of the economy and stimulation of Australians to spend. The trouble with the Prime Minister’s so-called fiscal stimulus package is that it will achieve none of that. This so-called fiscal stimulus will not stimulate jobs, jobs, jobs. What it will stimulate is debt, debt, debt, so that tomorrow’s children will be required to repay today’s debts. It will stimulate debt and, as my colleagues have said, in particular Senator Nash, it will stimulate politics. It will stimulate the Prime Minister’s popularity in the immediate short term.

What is wrong with the Prime Minister’s so-called fiscal stimulus package? Let us consider just some of the aspects. It is too much money, it will not work and it will burden tomorrow’s kids with today’s debts.

We know that our opposition to the so-called fiscal stimulus package will not be popular in the short term, but we are prepared for that. We believe it is the right decision, unfortunately, for our country at this time. We know that our opposition to a cash splash will not be popular, but we know it is right. Many people would welcome free money, but many people will also recognise that government money is not only not free; it is not government money—it is their money and one day it has to be repaid. They know that they will be the ones that have to pay it back, but, worse than that, their children and their children’s children stand to have to pay back the debts of today.

Let us reflect for a moment on some of the reasons why the world might be in this mess. I am no economist, but the world’s economists have suggested that we have this so-called global financial crisis in part because of the sophistication of the financial products that were being utilised around the world. The financial products were so sophisticated that they camouflaged the risks. You could not see them. It was someone else’s money and someone else somewhere else was taking the risks. The scenario allowed too many people to borrow too much money.

The Prime Minister’s so-called fiscal stimulus package mirrors those faults. It camouflages the risks; it risks other people’s money. Governments do not have money; they borrow it and use taxpayers’ money—it is our people’s money. The government is asking tomorrow’s taxpayers, tomorrow’s children, to foot the risk and fund today’s debt. How can this package cushion us from a recession when it is premised in part on the very things which the world’s economists say led us to this position in the first place?

The Prime Minister is asking us in this place to rubber-stamp his so-called fiscal stimulus package. Labor has demanded that parliament approve the plans within 48 hours, yet it refuses to sit down and discuss the plan with us or, indeed, with others. It is 48 hours for just 42 billion bucks. That is just over an hour for every billion dollars or, to put it another way, just one second for each quarter of a million dollars of expenditure of taxpayers’ funds. We think that is taking a risk too far.

The Prime Minister expects Australians to hold him in blind faith, but he was not upfront when he made his policy announcements on Tuesday, because the fact is that while talking of a $42 billion emergency package the Prime Minister was actually seeking a taxpayer funded line of credit to five times that amount, some $200 billion. Like an oversized credit card, Australians will be paying for these debts well beyond the end of the Prime Minister’s spending spree.

But Australians have learnt from bitter experience what happens when you get that letter from the bank. In the government’s case it would say: ‘Dear customer, you are about to reach your $75 billion credit limit. Would you like to extend it to $200 billion?’ Australians have learnt that behaviour like that in a consumer sense has contributed to the situation we are in today. They have learnt that our lending institutions lent too much money to too many people who could not afford to pay it back. They will see through this ploy from Rudd Labor. They will see through this move by the Prime Minister to write to parliament, under camouflage of a bill, saying, ‘PS: Let’s extend the line of credit from $75 billion to $200 billion. Let’s almost triple it.’ They will see through that and over time they will not accept it. They will see that as the beginning of the end or, worse still, the continuation of what has got us to where we are today.

Why not this package? The country needs a stimulus package that will create and protect jobs and bolster the economy. But when subjected even to minor scrutiny—of course, that is all we have had time for—the package cannot do what it seems to purport to do. The Prime Minister might as well have been running for the job of Santa Claus prior to Christmas when he handed out his cash splash at that time, with cash bonuses to the tune of $10.4 billion. Now we work out that it was all for nix. It is gone, gone, gone.