Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Mason is passionate but misguided. It is fortunate that the coalition were cosseted by many years of a resource boom and record terms of trade, because they are certainly stuck with an economic rhetoric and policy that is simplistic and unresponsive to our changing economic circumstances. It is simplistic because they refuse to recognise that there is some debt that produces wealth, and that there are valuable assets to be acquired which may require the current generation to go into debt but which will then produce wealth for subsequent generations. The simplistic record that they talk about, the children and grandchildren inheriting debt, is just that: very simplistic. By investing in productive assets the government can create wealth for subsequent generations. That is what the Labor Party stands for.

I think the Treasurer of Queensland, Mr Fraser, expressed it quite well in an article in the Australian recently. He defended the Labor government’s budgetary position and the more than $70 billion in debt and said:

… the money including $17 billion this financial year was needed for major capital works that would strengthen the economy.

He said the Government would not be pressured into cutting its infrastructure program for the sake of a higher credit rating and “political sanctity”.

“The people of Queensland need to understand there’s a very clear choice here,” Mr Fraser said in Brisbane. “There’s a choice between preserving a $17 billion capital program and the 119,000 jobs it supports, with a AA+ credit rating, or slashing the capital program to have a triple-A rating.

“In these circumstances, facing the full force of the global financial crisis, we choose jobs and the capital program, and having a AA+ credit rating.”

That decision makes sense in the current global economic environment. The $17 billion previously committed to capital works and infrastructure by the Queensland government was in response to a strongly growing and expanding economy. Part of the reason for that strongly growing and expanding economy in Queensland was the Beattie and Bligh Labor governments, but in order to maintain growth infrastructure has to be provided. For coal and mineral exports, there needs to be road, rail and port infrastructure put in place. There is demand from the growing population for water and electricity infrastructure. This is the kind of expenditure that needs to be made so that Queensland can continue to grow. To say otherwise, as the coalition is doing, is exceptionally simplistic and wrongheaded.

Towards the end of the Howard government a widely recognised problem—probably one of the reasons that the coalition lost government—was that Australia’s infrastructure was not keeping pace with the resource and economic boom which the coalition government were gifted. Infrastructure in the form of roads, rail and ports was not keeping pace with the level of exports that Australia was producing. There was a great deal of commentary that much more investment in infrastructure was required. This was not just commentary by the Labor Party or the press; it was commentary by businesses, which needed this infrastructure investment in order to prosper—and it was not happening under the coalition government because they had this blinkered view of economic policy. And the coalition continue to see things that way.

What is the stark reality of policy alternatives facing Queensland families? On one hand, the state government has released its jobs sustainment and growth plan, which will see 100,000 new jobs for Queenslanders over the coming years on top of the 119,000 jobs supported by the $17 billion infrastructure program. That jobs plan is built around the maintenance of current capital works costed in that $17 billion combined with supporting new business, including the emerging liquefied natural gas industry, as well as the expansion in training programs. Alternatively, at the heart of the Liberal National Party policy is a plan to cut $1 billion a year in recurrent spending from the budget.

The Queensland Labor government has said that the coalition plan will see 12,000 public sector sackings and a reduction in basic government services for the Queensland people at a time when reliance on government services will be at its peak. This is denied by Lawrence Springborg and the Liberal National Party, and all the coalition can do in this chamber is claim that the Queensland economy has collapsed. But this is not the situation; the Bligh government has promised a program that will maintain jobs in Queensland, supported by federal Labor government policies, to enable Queensland to emerge strongly when the global economic situation allows.

In contrast, a Liberal National Party government will cause contraction of the economy and job losses and will mean spending and investment will be cut while the government wait to see what will happen. In Queensland there will be a situation where every man looks after himself. Everyone would have to fend for themselves because a Liberal National Queensland government would be in economic lockdown just waiting to see what will happen. They would not have the kind of planned, reasoned response that the Labor government in Queensland and the Rudd Labor government federally have endorsed.

The Vice-President of the Moody’s rating agency, Debra Roane, said that while the state’s economy is ‘rapidly slowing from the robust trends of recent years’ Queensland has ample budget flexibility to manage the projected decline in revenues. She said:

However, the government policy response to these budgetary pressures has yet to be articulated.

What she is saying is that the Queensland government is reviewing what is happening in the economy. The election announcement by Premier Anna Bligh seeks to address this uncertainty through a clear articulation of a budget policy and growth policy for the future. The Labor government has been endorsed by a number of people, including ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake, who said that there was ‘no plausible alternative’ to a budget deficit at this point in time.

It is quite unbelievable that through this matter of public importance Senator Brandis seeks to brand the Queensland government as economically irresponsible and the Springborg plan of a $1 billion annual budget cut as responsible, for in May last year Senator Brandis, on the ABC’s Stateline, seemed to feel that the Nationals, led by Lawrence Springborg, were the reason that the ‘Liberal Party is artificially depressed in Queensland’. Prior to the amalgamation of the National and Liberal parties, Senator Brandis felt that it was Mr Springborg who was dragging the Liberal brand down, whereas now apparently he is the future for Queensland.

Combining the Rudd government’s $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan with state construction investment in roads, schools, local council community projects, climate change initiatives and housing, Queensland will be well placed for a return to the economic prosperity it enjoyed for more than a decade with a state Labor government at its helm.