Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Just before lunch, I was speaking on this bill and I was reminding the Senate how incompetent the Labor Party is in managing any economy. I was drawing from the budget last night which has told Australians that there will be a record net debt incurred by this government of $188 billion, which will have to be repaid by someone. I think the public thinks that these are just figures that politicians and newspapers talk about, but actually they have to be repaid by someone. It will be not only this generation but this generation’s children and grandchildren who will have to pay off Labor’s financial profligacy in running up this $188 billion debt.

In this budget alone there is a $58 billion deficit. That is just incredible when you think that the last coalition budget left a surplus of some $20 billion. The Labor Party have turned that $20 billion around by $58 billion in less than 18 months. Two-thirds of that debt is due to spending decisions made by the Rudd government—by Mr Rudd and Mr Swan—in the last 18 months. So they cannot blame everyone else, as they are prone to do. It is all somebody else’s fault, they will tell you. But it is spending decisions of theirs that have run up two-thirds of that debt that we will all have to pay off.

Every year we as a nation, we taxpayers, will have to pay some $8 billion in interest payments on Mr Rudd’s debt. How many schools, hospitals and roads does that mean will not be built because we are spending the money on paying off Mr Rudd interest bill? In his own budget papers Mr Rudd even acknowledges that unemployment will increase to one million of our fellow Australians. This is getting back to the Keating and Hawke days when unemployment was in the double-digit percentage figures. One million of our fellow Australians will be unemployed.

I was saying, before we had to adjourn at lunchtime, that with a record like that and the record of the state Labor governments, with every one having real financial problems—and they were having financial problems before the global financial crisis, I might say—why would we as a parliament be giving the Labor Party more opportunities to waste our money with this bill before the chamber at the present time? I was saying just as we adjourned that Mr Rudd had a thought on the run, which is usually the case. He thought of a way he could get a headline the next day. He announced that he would enter into the banking business in conjunction with the four big banks by propping them up in relation to any foreign investments that might retire from Australia for various reasons. But that reason was shot down by no less than the Reserve Bank of Australia who, as I quoted just before lunch, had said that that was not happening at the present time and that there was little sign of it happening. As I asked then, why are we bothering with this?

I can say that one of the reasons there will be a dearth of investment in Australia from foreign banks and foreign investors in the future will be this crazy emissions trading scheme that Senator Wong and Mr Rudd have proposed. We are not quite sure what the latest iteration of the emissions trading scheme is; it seems to change daily. I cannot help but feel sorry for Senator Penny Wong for the humiliation she has suffered in having her grand plan for a carbon pollution reduction scheme overturned by Mr Rudd, who is not quite taking it back—although it is getting along those lines—to the scheme proposed by Mr Howard in the last government. I would venture to wager that, by the time Mr Rudd has finished, for all his pious words before the election and for all his toadying up to the Greens to get their second preference support in the last federal election and for all of those promises he made, he will end up with a scheme very much the same as Mr Howard was proposing in the last government.

The reason there will be a dearth of investment in Australia is because companies in the aluminium, coal and cement areas are all multinational companies that can invest anywhere in the world, and many of them have other plants, mines and facilities elsewhere in the world. They will simply not invest in Australia because to invest in Australia will mean that you have to have an extra tax, an extra burden, on your coalmining, aluminium and cement operations that many other countries do not have—like our big competitors in the export of coal, such as Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa. These are countries which are not going to have emissions trading schemes.

Sure, we all have to do our bit to reduce emissions, but this scheme proposed by Senator Wong and Mr Rudd will not reduce emissions one iota. It will just mean that those highly emitting industries will move away from Australia’s fairly tight regulations to countries where there are no regulations at all. So you will not save the world from any emissions; in fact, you will increase the emissions from other countries which do not have Australia’s good regulations. At the same time, you will be exporting the jobs of Australian workers—those working families that Mr Rudd was so keen to look after before the last election. But he gets into power and he sends their jobs to Indonesia, South Africa and Columbia and he plans in this budget for one million people to be out of work. And it will get worse with this crazy emissions trading scheme, unless good common sense prevails and Mr Rudd accepts and acknowledges the error of his ways. In spite of Senator Wong’s objection, he has already half admitted that. But we can only hope that, in the end, he will do what is right for Australia and say, ‘Let’s reduce our emissions when others are doing it, so we are not exporting emissions offshore and we are not exporting the jobs offshore of hardworking Australian families and their providers.

When it comes to financial management, this particular piece of legislation is as crazy as anything else that the Labor Party touches. It has been said of this bill that it will have a counterproductive effect on what Mr Rudd is proposing. In fact, Mr Peter Verwer, from the Property Council of Australia, pointed out, ‘The security of a taxpayer funded safety net will allow foreign banks to exit at full value of their investment. It is the strongest argument against this bill.’ He further said:

… we do not have the technical answer as to how we can make sure foreign banks do not try and use ABIP as their escape card from Australia.

So it is having the exact reverse effect. Madam Acting Deputy President, if time permitted, and unfortunately it does not, I could list many other reason why this piece of legislation before us is as crazy as the budget we saw last night. It does nothing for Australia. It helps a few of the Labor Party’s mates in big business. They have mates in big business, in big unions and in the state governments, but they are using the money of other working Australians to prop up these crazy schemes and to bring forward the sort of budget we saw last night. This bill deserves no support from this chamber and it certainly will not be supported by the coalition.