Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator O’Brien interjects and says it is all the financial crisis. But, you see, Australia would have been so much better placed if the silly nonsense, the divisive and unsustainable nonsense, of Mr Rudd had not been allowed to impact the Australian economy and the budget. Remember, in January last year the economy was overheating: those nasty Liberals had made the economy grow too big! It was growing too fast and it had to be slowed down. What did Kevin Rudd do in the May budget? Through taxation measures he hoovered out of the economy $20 billion of extra taxes—keep that figure in mind, an extra $20 billion of taxes hoovered out of the economy—designed to slow the economy down because it was overheating.

They were still going on with that mantra in the face of all the evidence that we had predicted to them would overtake the Australian economy. So the situation today is that Australia is in a worse position to face this crisis because of the mismanagement of the economy by Labor. If they had allowed growth to continue, if they had not hoovered out that $20 billion by way of extra taxation, the economy would not have fallen into as big a hole as it is in today. Sure, it still would be in a hole because of the economic crisis, but I am saying—and I think most economic commentators now accept—that the Liberal-National plan for the economy, if it had been adopted, would have had Australia in a much stronger position.

I remind those opposite that when we left office unemployment was 3.9 per cent. After 12 months Labor, in their usual style, have already got it up to 4.8 per cent and it is heading north very quickly. What is their remedy for this? ‘Let’s borrow $200 billion.’ All they talk about is protecting this, doing this somehow—it is all good, sweet and light. And of course it is if you go on a spending spree and you pull out the bank card. It is great going round all the shops being able to buy up everything. But one day you have got to pay it all back. It is a bit like a big lolly. In fact it is not a lolly; it is more like a pill with a very thin veneer of sugar coating over it. You offer it to people and say: ‘Look, taste this—how sweet is this! We can deliver $950—sorry, we have amended it now—$900 to you, $600 to you, $300 to you. We will give you a new school. We will even give you pink batts and a boom gate—you name it, we will deliver it, all at no cost.’ But the reality is that—and I think that the Australian people are waking up—all this sweetener on the outside of this very large pill hides a very big, bitter centre that will leave a very bad economic aftertaste in the mouths of Australians.

What we on this side are concerned about is that, in 10 or 15 years time, when the next generation of leaders are in this place and they have demands from their community asking, ‘Where is some money for a hospital or a road or a school?’ they will be told by the Treasurer of the day, ‘Sorry, the money ain’t there.’ The community will ask why, and the answer will be, ‘Because we have a recurring interest bill of $7 billion to $10 billion per annum,’ and they will rightly ask, ‘Who incurred that bill? Who incurred that bill and mortgaged our future?’ The answer will be: Mr Rudd and the Labor Party, aided and abetted by the Australian Greens—and can I say economic management has never been the strong suit of either the Australian Greens or the Australian Labor Party.

But I say to Senator Fielding from Family First: put not only families first but every individual family member first—because if Senator Fielding does vote for this package he will incur a debt of $9,500 for every man, woman and child in this country. And that is just the debt. There is then the interest to be paid year after year after year. Mr Rudd tells us it is only going to be short term. That is all very well until you ask how long short term is: ‘Sorry, we can’t tell you. We can’t tell you what “short term” means.’ And that is where the political spin comes in. Mr Rudd is not about economic management; he is about political management. If he cannot tell us how long this debt will last, he should have the decency and honesty to tell the Australian people that, rather than try to con them by saying, ‘This will only be short term.’

Let us keep in mind, my friends, that it took 10 long years to pay off the $96 billion worth of debt that the Hawke-Keating era racked up over 13 years in government: 13 years in government, $96 billion of debt. Mr Rudd weaves his economic wizardry and in the first 13 months of his leadership of this country he has budgeted not for $96 billion but for $200 billion worth of debt. That will be like lead in the saddlebags of the Australian economy. It will stall economic growth in the future. When the economy turns, it will recover a lot more slowly. As a result, people will be unemployed for a lot longer. There are economic consequences—negative economic consequences—of borrowing. That is why we as an opposition are so very strong in seeking to ensure that there is intergenerational social justice here. Let us make no mistake: intergenerational social justice—