Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It’s a bad package. Not quite a third of the funds in this package can be spent immediately and, if you are really lucky, you will get to spend the rest over the next two years. What a great idea! Let’s have a small amount of money now but let’s put the rest of it out, if you are lucky, over two or three years to stimulate the economy in two or three years time. But of course, because you did not put the money in immediately, we will need more stimulus than it would have needed if you had put the money in earlier.

The idea of shovel-ready programs is a nonsense, and I think that everybody except perhaps a couple of journalists at the Canberra Times know this. There are very few programs that are ready to go. Certainly, if you are relying on the assistance of groups like QBuild in Queensland, which is notorious for its inefficiency, to assist you to get things on the ground fast, you are in big trouble. When you start involving state governments you slow things down. One shire engineer commented memorably to me that with the Roads to Recovery program—which was a Howard government initiative with the money going directly from the federal government to the councils—if you gave the money to local government 95 per cent of it went on the roads. If you gave the money to George Street—meaning the Queensland state government—50 per cent of it got spent on meetings in town. That is exactly the way this money will go. And of course you add a few more months so that all of those meetings can be had and all those public servants can do whatever it is that the government has required of them.

So it is an ill-considered package the wrong way round. Government intervention in the market will distort the market—that is for sure. We are going to have distortions all over the place in terms of the building industry—and, again, where is the confidence? What happens in December 2010 if by some miracle all the schools and house have been built? Where is the next package going to come from? No-one knows. If it is as irrational as this one, why would you be worrying about it? Let us look at this rush into policy without any detailed modelling. There is even absolute outrage at the possibility that we would want to scrutinise it.

I mentioned earlier that there is nothing in this for small business. There is a suggested business investment allowance for small business that would allow a greater write-off—a faster depreciation—and a payment back to small business for equipment purchases over $1,000. Except, of course, if you are going to make an equipment purchase over $1,000 you need to have cash flow first and the problem with this system is that if you do not have cash flow you have to wait until 30 June to get the money back. It is ridiculous. The superannuation guarantee levy that we proposed—which was grossly misrepresented by Ministers Sherry and Emerson—is a sensible and better solution for getting money to small business right now and for fixing cash flow right now. We will be opposing the government’s package.