Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Williams assures me that he paid 25 per cent. He must have more debt than me, I think; I cannot remember. We went through those terrible times when the country went into debt again—so much so that by 1996, when the Howard government took over, we had $96 billion worth of government debt. That has been well documented. You do not need me to remind you of all of those things. But here we are, a little over 12 months into the next Labor government—the Rudd Labor government—and we have gone from a surplus of $22 billion, which this government inherited, to a debt which may grow to anything up to $200 billion.

It was only this time last year that coming into this chamber we were castigated by Senator Conroy and other people over that side for letting the inflation genie out of the bottle. For six months, they talked about inflation monsters and the inflation genie. We received terrible criticism from those opposite about our record when in fact all we had done for the Labor Party was to leave them $22 billion of surplus. And they soon chewed that up. We have the third Labor government since 1949 and what are they doing? History is repeating itself again and we are going into serious debt—and I mean serious debt.

One of the things that I can always remember from 1996 is that the Howard government decided that it would pay off the $96 billion worth of government debt and pay off the $10 billion deficit in the current account at that stage as soon as was humanly possible. And we did. We as a government not only paid off the debt but also set up funds for the future which had assets of some $60 billion or $70 billion.

Here we are presented with a package of bills which they initially wanted us to pass through this parliament in 48 hours. Just imagine what those opposite would have said if we had tried to pass a set of bills with the magnitude of this expenditure in 48 hours when we were in government. I see Senator Carr sitting there. He would have been one of the greatest critics of us in government if we had tried to do exactly that. It was only because of the commonsense of the minor parties and the Greens that we are able to make sure that these bills were looked at closely and properly so that any flaws were able to be brought to the public’s attention.

The fact that the very large spending package that has come before has now been questioned has meant that many people in the public are now also starting to question the wisdom of giving away cash. As the previous speaker, Senator Payne, said, we had $10.4 billion given out in December. That was supposed to create 75,000 jobs. Where on earth did the Prime Minister get the figure of 75,000 jobs from? He must be totally embarrassed at having made that statement in December; to have suggested that by spending $10.4 billion—by that stage, they had got rid of the surplus—he would create 75,000 jobs. Some people in the Australian community believed what he said. But in fact no jobs—to the best of our knowledge—were created. Senator O’Brien was probably very lucky, he was in New York at that time, because he has some insulation from what was going on in Australia.