Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot help it, Senator Mason: I have to be fair. Maybe the Labor Party was saying that we were spending too much in the wrong areas and that they had better areas in which to spend the money, and that accounts for the differences in their approaches. I suppose that we can only test that by looking at what Labor has actually done in government. We will be able to see what coalition priorities they have put aside to replace them with Labor priorities when it comes to spending.

Before the last election, the Labor Party told us that the coalition was spending too much on consultancies. The Labor Party, we were told, would cut consultancies by $395 million. What happened? In the first full year that Labor was in government, spending on consultancies increased by 5.6 per cent to $454 million. We were told that they would save money by having proper business plans before any major spending proposal was undertaken. What happened to that when it came to the rollout of the National Broadband Network or the Julia Gillard memorial school halls? It disappeared in a puff of smoke. So much for the business plans.

Let us look at what they did to deal with other areas of what Mr Tanner might have called wasteful coalition spending on things like income support for students. Apparently, we were wasting money by supporting all those rural and regional students with youth allowance, so they decided to cut it when they came into office. They did not mention that before the election, mind you, but they discovered that that was part of the wasteful spending of the Howard coalition government. They said that they would not cut private health care. That was not part of our wasteful spending when in government. But of course that is exactly what they have decided to cut since coming to office. Cataract surgery was apparently wasteful coalition spending that needed to be cut, along with solar panel rebates, reproductive technology rebates et cetera. And the list goes on.

22:07:05

Mr President, if you want the best illustration of how confused, how dizzy, Labor’s policy on cutting wasteful expenditure was, you have only to look at the ultimate resort that they made to the efficiency dividend. When in opposition, Labor repeatedly and consistently criticised the 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend applied by the Howard government as being lazy decision-making: ‘You could not work out where the appropriate areas of government spending to cut were, so you just brought in a 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend.’ What did Labor do when they came into office? Not only did they retain the 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend but in their first full year of office they actually increased it by two percentage points, to a 3.25 per cent efficiency dividend. That is the discipline that Mr Tanner was talking about.

The fact of life is that we are yet to see the true colours of the Australian Labor Party. It is spending unprecedented amounts at the present time, but it claims to be doing so because there is a global financial crisis. We will see as this government goes on—if we are unfortunate enough to be lumbered with that prospect—just what its policies are in the long term. But I think that in February 2007 all those members and senators I was quoting were in fact the authentic voice of Labor on the question of spending. When they called for more to be spent on health, education, border security, disability services, training and so on and so forth, they were speaking for the Labor Party that we have known for many, many decades. That was the Labor Party that always spends more than the coalition and that simply cannot control itself.

Spin aside, the Rudd government is now spending more than any previous government in Australian history. Spending as a proportion of GDP reached its peak during the years of the Hawke and Keating governments. Something like 27 per cent of GDP, as at the time the Howard government left office, had dropped to 24 per cent of GDP. So much for it being a big spending government.

The deficit, as we know, today has reached dizzying heights. Under Whitlam the deficit reached 1.8 per cent of GDP, in the 1982-83 recession it reached 3.3 per cent of GDP and in the 1992-93 recession it reached 4.1 per cent of GDP. What does it stand at today? It stands at 4.9 per cent of GDP. That is the authentic voice of Labor. That is the record of the Labor Party. They spend more than they can afford, they run up deficits more than they can afford, they mount up more debt than the Australian community can afford and we will all be the legatees of that appalling policy. So, please, do not come into this place and lecture us about the lack of discipline in Howard government spending or any Liberal government spending. It just does not ring true. (Time expired)