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

I didn’t get wet. Let us look for a moment at the aspects of the cash splash that promise some bonuses to individual taxpayers. This helps illustrate why it is not just the concept but also the manner in which it is to be administered that fails to stand up to scrutiny. In their rush to have the plan put into action, the Treasurer and the tax office say that eligibility for the one-off cash payments will be assessed on the basis of last year’s income tax returns. Of course, when you splash the cash you have to draw the ad hoc line somewhere, so the government has chosen to draw the line at the financial year ending June 2008. Well, by the government’s very own admission, we are right now in very different times from June 2008; otherwise presumably they would have been planning back then for exactly this scenario, yet they tell us they were not.

It was very different in June 2008 from today—let alone from the short-term future. Yet the government proposes to splash its cash according to those who had certain income levels as of the end of June in the preceding financial year. What of the Australian workers who have lost their jobs since then? What of Australian workers who stand to lose their jobs in the future? Where is the justification for splashing the cash based on whether people had incomes at a certain level as of June last year when, by the government’s own testimony, the circumstances have been changing daily? If examples like this are just obvious on the surface then the package clearly demands further scrutiny.

The Leader of the House, Mr Albanese, suggests that any reasonable person would consider 20 hours sufficient time to consider this country’s biggest ever one-off spend. But signs of a contracting economy did not mysteriously appear on Monday of this week. Perhaps if the Prime Minister had spent recent weeks looking after the economy rather than writing a thesis we might have got a more considered so-called stimulus plan.

Instead, the Prime Minister seeks to allay the concerns of massive debt skewing government balance sheets by saying that Australia will experience only a temporary deficit. Australians know that Labor deficits are never temporary—as if debt to the tune of 20 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product is something that should be taken lightly. Representing the Treasurer in question time today, Senator Conroy all but dismissed concerns of interest payments being an ongoing burden. He suggested that $2.6 billion a year was nothing to be concerned about, yet 12 months ago $2.6 billion constituted 10 per cent of the budget surplus. Contrary to the opinions expressed by well-intended Australian consumers about free money and free batts during, for example, the TV news on Tuesday night this week, this package is anything but free. It is certainly anything but guilt free.

In a stimulus package designed in large part—yes, Senator Nash—to stimulate politics, we have a Prime Minister asking this place for a blank cheque and seeking to risk $200 billion of taxpayers’ money on the one-off chance that it will be enough to keep Australia out of recession. But what he is really doing is seeking a level of debt equivalent to $9½ thousand for each and every Australian. The opposition have a responsibility to ensure that we are not risking the future of our nation’s children. We know that tomorrow’s children will pay today’s debts. So, without further scrutiny, it is a risk that the opposition will not take. Rudd’s package is poorly targeted, ill thought—