Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last night Australians tuned into the ABC 7.30 Report with Kerry O’Brien and were staggered by Prime Minister Rudd’s behaviour. It reminded us all here in the chamber of the appalling mistake that the Labor Party made when they chose Mark Latham to be their leader. It was only due to the total rejection by Australians of that choice that the Labor caucus dumped him. After last night’s gripping performance—about which we have heard and seen a lot of editorial comment today—I can only ask: can the real Kevin Rudd please stand up? No matter how much he would like us to believe that he is a calm, conciliatory, approachable family man, those who have the misfortune to be close to him in the political arena seem to know otherwise. Air stewards, restaurant owners and waiters in Melbourne and even Labor caucus members, along with many former staffers, know only too well that this man is a fraud who has delivered a big-taxing, big-spending budget which is not only fiscally inept and unmanageable but also totally unrealistic. He wishes he could turn the clock back to his schmoozing days on the Sunrise breakfast program.

Last night he lost the plot, and with it he lost the support of the electorate. After taking a sharp dive in the polls following the shelving of his ETS legislation, not only Kerry O’Brien but also Mr Rudd’s party and his staunch followers are starting to question the Prime Minister’s leadership qualities. Even Dean Mighell recently said on Melbourne radio that he hoped Julia Gillard would be more of a Labor Prime Minister than Kevin Rudd. Her coy, smiling responses to that, though, do not cut the mustard. At last, we hear an honest word from a well-known comrade in the ALP ranks.

The Australian public are now evaluating the so-called achievements of this government, and with good reason. At last they are realising that it has nothing to show but a huge debt. Mr Rudd has failed the Australian people like no other Prime Minister before, and this government is arguably the most appalling and inept in Australian history. Even the supporters of Gough Whitlam now have a smile on their faces. There is nothing left of the last election promises of this government. They either have simply failed to get off the ground or have amounted to little more than unprecedented mismanagement, bungling and outright failure.

Let us go through just a few of them. We are only months from the next federal election and what do we have? There is no ETS. There is no human rights bill, which was pledged. We do not see the 266 childcare centres that were pledged. We do not see all the GP super clinics that were pledged—or the extra aged-care beds or all those trades training centres. What about Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch? What a catastrophic disaster they were. What we have instead is one illegal boat after another arriving and a massive black hole in the budget which, as we all know, will not return to surplus in 2012-13. Speaking of the boat arrivals, that inept social public policy position on border protection has seen a blow-out of a billion dollars and we are now up to a record 125 boats. This government is on the skids and this budget is built on a house of cards.

Mr Rudd’s economic outlook depends entirely on a new tax grab which he will not be able to put into action. The coalition will not support what is nothing but a 40 per cent slug on the profits of resource mining, and he very well knows this. He also knows that Senator Fielding is opposed to this irresponsible and knee-jerk measure. So there is $12 billion of revenue gone that is necessary to return the budget to surplus in the next two years. No wonder the Prime Minister is losing it on public television, and I doubt very much if he is sleeping very well of a night.

The budget deficit this coming year is a massive $40.8 billion. This is the second-biggest deficit since World War II. Labor will have to borrow more than $700 million a week to cover its net debt, the interest payments and to keep the cash flow going. Let us just put that into language that we all understand because I cannot, for the life of me, think how any government could borrow that amount of money. That is over $30 that the government is borrowing for every man, woman and child in this country each week to cover net debt interest payments and to keep the cash flow going. Government debt will be a massive $94 billion in 2012-13, requiring $6.5 billion a year in interest payments; and, with his philosophy to spend billions while saving millions, this will not change. Instead of being economically prudent, as stated so many times, Mr Rudd again flushes Australian taxpayers’ money down the toilet.

But the biggest broken promise of all is the one where the Prime Minister declared himself to be an economic conservative who would keep the budget in surplus. I stand in this chamber today with the message for Mr Rudd: you cannot achieve this goal if you blow a billion dollars on the computers in schools program because you forgot to calculate funding for software, for the training, for the teachers and for the lockers that the kids need to secure the computers in. It is inconceivable that anybody would put together a program like that without appreciating what the add-on needs were.

You cannot return the budget to surplus if you blow out another half a billion dollars for cleaning up the mess you have caused by not administering the catastrophic pink batts bungle, ignoring warnings and risks. When we are talking financially about the fiasco of the insulation program, we must not forget those families who are still traumatised by the loss of loved ones sadly lost in fires. It is just an appalling failure of public policy. You cannot return the budget to surplus if you blow another $1 billion on your failed border management policy, inviting boat people to this country, promising VIP flights and four-star hotel accommodation. You cannot return the budget to surplus by blowing money on the ill-conceived Building the Education Revolution program, which, in my opinion, should be renamed the ‘Building Expensive Restrooms program’.

Mr Rudd has gone on a reckless spending binge which can only be described as economic vandalism. In less than three short years he has replaced a $20 billion surplus with a deficit nearly three times as large. We have repeatedly said in this chamber that it took the former coalition government 10 long and hard years to pay back the staggering $96 billion dollar debt which was the result of the prior Labor government’s spendathon. The list of Mr Rudd’s waste is indeed very impressive. He created a phantom department where 150 public servants implement and administer the government’s ETS, at a cost of $81.9 million, despite the fact that a scheme currently does not exist and, from what we can gather, probably never will exist.

Solar panels, on the other hand, do exist and are very popular with the electorate. Yet this is the very reason why we do not have a solar power program anymore: it was too effective and too successful. They were not able to predict the high demand for this very program, resulting in an $850 million blow-out. Labor, in their infinite wisdom, intended to spend $150 million over five years on solar rebates but instead splurged $1 billion in just 18 months, so the program was abolished. Yes, the bill for fighting the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’ has been a very costly one. A similar fiasco was Labor’s $175 million Green Loans Program. The audit of the program alone cost taxpayers more than $4 million.

But let us move on, because, as they say, ‘Yes, there is more.’ Labor promised broadband for $4.7 billion but broke that promise, replacing it with a $43 billion plan. Let us not forget that, whilst getting there, they have wasted $20 million on a cancelled tender process and spent $25 million on yet another report. Labor spent over $10 million on legal fees defending the rights of nine Sydney terrorists who were found guilty of terrorism offences. This is more than $1 million for each terrorist. Then taxpayers received the bill for almost $2 million in consultancy fees as Mr Rudd tried to find ways to save money on travel. Just imagine what would happen if all households worked like that! Two separate consultants were hired, one for $1.4 million and the other for almost half a million dollars, to do scoping studies on how to meet the goal of saving $26 million on travel. Every Australian could give him the answer—that is, stay home, fix up your problems here in Australia and look after the interests of all that you are responsible for and accountable to.

The cost of refurbishing Australia’s embassy at the Vatican also cost much more than originally budgeted for. Then we have a bill of $1.3 million to stop accidents that never have happened—this is the amount of money Mr Rudd has spent realigning roads around Parliament House in Canberra. It was something that was raised in the last estimates, and government officials could not remember if a single accident had ever happened on the road around here.

But let us stop looking at the waste from the past; let us have a look at what this budget holds. There is—deeply buried, of course—a $10 million grant to a so-called Trade Union Education Foundation. One could reasonably ask why they are the recipients of a $10 million grant and whether it is to fund union bosses and their efforts to support the Labor government at the forthcoming election. Then we have the proposal of the Rudd government to waste $126 million on taxpayer funded political print, radio and television advertising—government advertising that they pledged they were going to stop at the last election. That $126 million includes $30 million for another climate change advertising campaign, despite the government having no climate change policy.

The same principle applies to paid parental leave. Although the PPL legislation is before parliament, the Rudd government have already committed $12 million to advertise the scheme. We have not even seen the legislation and yet they have allocated $12 million for the scheme. Mr Rudd is also proposing a new $29.5 million advertising campaign to sell his health changes, even though Western Australia has not signed on and all new beds will not even be delivered until 2013-14.

There is only one thing that is consistent about this government and Prime Minister Rudd—that is, their fixation on maxing out on the cash in all programs. I saw today in the Australian in ‘Cut and paste’ his very consistent claims that everything is the biggest ever in the history of Australia. This is an absolute disaster for all Australians.