Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Obviously everybody listening to the broadcast of this would realise that the Labor Party are filibustering their way through this. It is a little bit ridiculous. I want to go through a couple of things Senator Arbib brought up. I want to note on the record that, the day after the US stimulus package, the American share market fell over. It was nothing to do with the bailout package. The bailout package still has not been finalised—not according to the Washington Post, which I have just looked at. So Senator Sherry’s proposition that the US stock market fell over because of the bailout package completely contradicts what the US newspapers are saying.

I have some serious questions. I do not know whether they are ever going to be answered or whether we are just going to have renditions of this debate. It seems peculiar in the extreme that, with the Labor Party wanting to bring forward the Emissions Trading Scheme and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, they are not part of the forward estimates in this package. For the life of me, I do not know why no reference is given to this—except that it is beyond the time frame of consideration—when the consideration of the ETS is immediate.

In the repayment schedule on page 5 of the updated economic and fiscal outlook booklet of February 2009, you have outlined how you are going to return the budget to surplus. You have put forward to the Australian people how you are going to repay $200 million in approximately two bullet points:

• allowing the level of tax receipts to recover naturally as the economy improves, while maintaining the Government’s commitment to keep taxation as a share of GDP below the 2007-08 level on average; and
• holding real growth in spending to 2 per cent a year until the budget returns to surplus.

That is $100 million per bullet point. The question everybody listening to this wants to know is: how on earth do we repay this money?

Why are we paying for things which, in the past, the states were supposed to pay for, such as schools and boom gates? These things are very meritorious in their own right, but what is the Labor Party’s belief in the role of the states these days? Do they not believe the states have a role? If they do not, that is fine, but let us have it on the record that they no longer think the states are relevant and capable of actually managing their own affairs. Why have the states fallen so far behind in managing to keep up their own infrastructure that now, ipso facto, your stimulus package has to bail them out? In the housing section of your package, the states will sell the land to the developers, so the states will make money; and then the developers will sell it to the Commonwealth, so the developers will make money. But, when the Commonwealth buys the land from the developers, why on earth are we going to pay back to the states the stamp duty and all the other charges when, at the end of the day, we will be delivering back to the states the houses and the land? Why are we going to pay for the houses twice and give them back to the states?

In your dissertation we have this crazy position whereby you are going to net off the debt. You have come up with this magical number of $2.66 billion, which apparently takes into account $7.5 billion in interest expenses. But you have netted it off against HECS, a commercial property vehicle and the Future Fund. The moneys in the Future Fund are supposed to stay within the fund. They are not supposed to be part of netting off anything. They are part of the growth in the Future Fund to cover other liabilities, such as unpaid Commonwealth superannuation.

The HECS debt is a non-determinant income flow. It is about $17 billion, and last year, even on principal and interest, it only returned six per cent. That was the return on both principal and interest, not just interest. Where are your exact numbers on what you really believe each one of those items to be—HECS, the commercial property vehicle and the Future Fund? Why have you changed the determination of where the Future Fund interest is going? What is your logic in netting off Future Fund interest when you know it is supposed to go back towards the corpus of the fund? How do you possibly believe that you can make a determination of what you are going to get back from the HECS fund when we are heading into the middle of a recession? How can you possibly understand what the return on the Future Fund is going to be when we are going into a recession and the share market is falling over?

What is the logic behind netting this off? How strong is your belief that this is going to give you the capacity to net off the debt at $2.66 billion? Why is your rounding error $40 million on the figures that you have given today? The questions go on and on and on. These are the questions that we want answered, rather than this eternal waffle the Australian people are hearing as you try to work out how you are going to stitch up a deal at the eleventh hour. This whole plan is hardly the Mona Lisa, but it sounds like you are doing your very best to put a moustache on it.