Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to pick up on some points made by Senator Collins earlier and to ask some questions of the government. In doing so, I do welcome Labor senators to this debate. It only took them a week. No doubt last week the spin machine in the government told Labor senators not to participate in this debate. This week, the deal makers in the back room have told them to come out here and, essentially, present the government’s propaganda. In the history of the Commonwealth, when future generations of Australians will look at what happened in this chamber during this debate, it is, quite frankly, not going to be a very good reflection on Labor senators. They were absent from the debate when they should have been a part of it, and now they are participating in the debate for all the wrong reasons and in totally the wrong way.

Senator Collins earlier accused senators opposite her of being ‘global financial crisis sceptics’. She said, ‘Perhaps senators on the coalition side of the chamber are not only climate change sceptics but also global financial crisis sceptics.’ Inadvertently—and I am sure it was inadvertent—Senator Collins put her finger right on the heart of the lack of consistency and the flawed logic of the government’s argument on this package given some of the other policy initiatives they are pursuing. The total inconsistency is this. The government are telling us—and the minister told us five minutes ago—that this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and that we need a $42 billion spending spree to deal with it. We happen to think that that is the wrong way of going about dealing with it. We do not think that a cash splash is the answer. But let us leave that to one side for a moment.

If the government really believe this, why at the same time do they not tell us that they will also review all of their other major policy initiatives that are going to have a major impact on the Australian economy? In Senate question time last week I asked a question of the Minister representing the Treasurer. I asked whether, given the revised Treasury forecast, the government would conduct further Treasury modelling into the impact of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the Australian economy. I was sneered at by the minister. The minister essentially said, ‘The premise of the question is flawed and as such it doesn’t deserve an answer.’ The reality is this. The government will not deny that Treasury modelling did not assess the impact of the so-called global financial crisis on the outcomes of its modelling on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. There is no argument about that. But we are talking about an unprecedented spending spree, which the government initially wanted the parliament to commit to within 36 hours, because we are told we are facing the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression. But, when we ask some very serious questions about other major public policy initiatives of the government and whether the government is prepared to review their impact on the Australian economy, we are told: ‘No, it doesn’t really matter. It won’t be a problem.’ The minister and the government have on previous occasions said, ‘We have conducted the most extensive modelling in history but we the government have not assessed the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the Australian economy in the context of the global financial crisis.’

We are not global financial crisis sceptics. We understand that these are very serious times and that we need to come up with a considered way forward for Australia. But we are Rudd government sceptics. We are very sceptical of the way the Rudd government is managing the economy. We are very sceptical of the way the Rudd government has managed the economy right from the word go. Before the last election, the now Prime Minister sold himself as an economic conservative but now we are getting concentrated socialism. The government tells us that taking cash from over here and distributing it over there somehow is going to provide sustainable stimulus to the economy. Let me tell you that a government can never inject new money into an economy; the government can only ever take cash from over here and spend it somewhere else. This government is proposing to not only take cash from over here and distribute it over there but also borrow from future generations of Australians to spend on consumption. Any household or business will tell you that it is completely irresponsible to borrow money to spend on consumption. You ought to borrow money to invest in infrastructure, to invest in things that the future generations that will have to repay will draw benefit from. That is not what this government is proposing. This government is proposing to borrow money to facilitate people across Australia going on a spending spree. That is not responsible economic policy.

The major point that I want to make, going on from the question I asked the government, is this. Given the ongoing rhetoric and statements of the government in this chamber today about this being the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, will the government today advise the Senate that Treasury will conduct some further economic modelling of the impact of its proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the Australian economy and on jobs, in particular in the context of what the government describes as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?