Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Before I address standing order 75, the MPI for today, I would just like to congratulate Senator Back on a wonderful first speech. It was terrific, particularly on St Patrick’s Day.

As I listened to the debate this afternoon, a new dichotomy came to mind—my friend Senator Carr would probably call it a ‘dialectic’. It is this: on this side of the chamber we have economic conservatives and on that side of the chamber we have former economic conservatives. There are just two types in the Australian Senate: the former economic conservatives and the economic conservatives.

The other day I had to address some schoolkids. They were very intelligent—they were from Queensland. I asked them what they thought caused the global economic recession. There was a bit of discussion about it and they said: ‘Senator Mason, we think the problem was really generated from the fact that people borrowed too much and then they spent too much. The economy overheated and got out of control. There was too much borrowing and there was too much spending.’ That is exactly what they said. So what is the Rudd government’s answer to the current global financial crisis? His to borrow some more and spend more. What got us into the problem in the first place was that we spent too much and we borrowed too much, and the government’s answer is to borrow some more and to spend some more. It is a bad, bad spend, and that is the problem. It has not worked.

The ideology is interesting. Both Mr Rudd and Ms Bligh share some part of southern Brisbane—West End. So I call it West End economics, basically: the idea that you can spend and borrow your way out of a recession. In Queensland right now government debt is $74 billion. That is $900 for every man, every child and every woman in Queensland. Nine hundred dollars is the annual interest bill for every man, woman and child in Queensland—every one of them. So what is Mr Rudd’s idea of solving the global financial crisis? It is to give—certainly to some of these families—$900. So Mr Rudd is borrowing $900 to give to the families in Queensland that have to pay back the $900 that is owed by the Bligh government annually in interest. It is a bizarre idea, in effect, of Mr Rudd’s credit card paying off Ms Bligh’s credit card—you know, when you use one credit card to pay off another one. That is what the Australian Labor Party and Australian politics is doing today: using the federal credit card to try to pay off the state credit card. How long is that going to last? That is West End economics at its best. Some might even call it ‘cooperative federalism’ at its very best—who knows?

The problem is that it is a bit cheaper these days for the federal government to lend this money because the federal government still has a AAA credit rating. We have lost that in Queensland, and that is why it costs more to borrow money if you are living in Queensland. Let me ask the $42 billion question, and it is the $74 billion question in Queensland: has any Labor government in Australia’s history, state or federal, ever been in government long enough to pay off government debt? Let me ask the question again: has any Labor government at state or federal level ever been in government long enough to pay off government debt?