Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Bribie Island to the Gold Coast. The other depressed regional town that they were helping out was called the Sunshine Coast. So we have the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast and it just goes on because part of their regional policy at this moment is the redevelopment of an airstrip in this depressed little regional town called Perth. Four hundred and eighty million dollars is coming out of their regional development budget to develop an airport in Perth. That airport well may need to be developed, but I think you have a little bit of a hide to call Perth a regional town. I think it has probably evolved a little bit beyond bucolic kitsch. I think it would be fair enough to say that Perth is a substantial city and should be nominated as such. But these are the sorts of intricacies that we have and examples of the duplicitous nature that the Labor Party will purvey in this parliament. What we must do is to hold them to these ridiculous promises and really shine a light on them. We want to say to the Australian people—especially, to be honest, to those who supported the Labor Party in attaining government—that if we get to the end of this term and the inland rail has not been built, did they keep their promise? If we get to the end of this term and see what has happened to the NBN—how did that promise go?

The promise that I am really fascinated with is the one that says you will bring the budget into surplus. I have to see it to believe this one. It is going to be a ripper. Just in the last week, your gross debt went up by $4 billion. You now owe $160.9 billion at a federal government level. We read in the papers that the states, which have predominantly state Labor governments—Western Australia has been good, but the state Labor governments are hopeless—are going to get to $240 billion in debt. This peak debt is marching on its way. Even under your own estimates—and you are always wrong—you say it is going to peak at $210 billion. You have your $210 billion that you owe to the Chinese and to the people in the Middle East—people all around the world that have to be repaid. You have the debt that the state Labor governments owe to people all around the world and you have to start adding these numbers up. Because the state Labor governments in their many guises are absolutely hopeless with money they are saying to the local governments, ‘If you want something, you have to borrow the money.’ Now we are seeing the local governments’ debts marching ahead. This is all a house of cards that the Labor Party has created and does so every time.

They are hopeless when it comes to managing the books. Then they try with the guile, cunning and sleekness that would be splendid in any flying carpet salesman to say that they are good economic managers. We have a party who, to be honest, started with $58 billion in gross debt and who have now taken it to $160.9 billion in gross debt and whose state governments are marching out to $240 billion in gross debt, which they have to repay, and they say that this apparently is good economic management. We will take this government back to core themes about their capacity, when they talk about a surplus, to actually deliver it.

I will tell you why I am sceptical about it. The year that just passed was supposed to have a $17 billion surplus. We actually had a $57 billion deficit, so they kind of missed the mark just a fraction. The second biggest deficit in our nation’s history is the one we are in right now. You have to remember that, even if we did get to a surplus, a surplus does not mean you have paid back your debt; it just means that you have a little bit of money available to pay back your debt. For instance, if they talk about a billion-dollar surplus—or maybe it is a $2 billion surplus, but let us say we have a billion-dollar surplus—and we still have our $210 billion in gross debt, how many hundreds of years do you want to hang around to pay it off?

They say, ‘You’ve got to talk about net debt.’ It is always about net debt. They never actually explain to you exactly how they get to their net debt number. They can say, ‘Even though our gross debt will be $210 billion, our net debt’s only going to be $90 billion.’ That is splendid. Explain to me the difference between the two numbers. Explain to me how you have got from $210 billion back down to $90 billion—a difference of $120 billion. How did you do it? It becomes very difficult. They say, ‘You plough your way through Senate estimates and you find out that there’s $30 billion in cash reserves in the Future Fund.’ We always thought that the cash reserves in the Future Fund were to cover the liability that is out there for public servants’ superannuation—$120 billion in liabilities there. But no: apparently they are saying that if needed it will pay off the debt. Then we have the $16 billion in HECS. Good luck collecting that! You will be going up every gully around Nimbin and around every pub trying to get the money out of the students to pay back their loans. I do not think you will get it overnight. It might take a while, and you would have to put a contingency on whether you get it at all, or at least a large portion of it.

Then there is the big one, a question put on notice at the last estimates and still not answered. We found that, in going from $210 billion—it was actually larger at that point, $220 billion—back down to $90 billion, they had $75 billion nominated as—wait for it—‘other’. There was $75 billion worth of ‘others’. I always get worried about ‘others’. As an accountant, I have found rats, mice and all sorts of pests in ‘other’. But they have $75 billion stacked up in there. I will bet you London to a brick that the day the light really shines on the Labor Party books there is going to be a massive hole in the finances of this nation. Anyway, there is their financial management.

Then, of course, we have come down to the great wonder of our times, climate change. This is the plan where the Labor Party cools the planet from a room in Canberra. It has to be seen to be believed. Yes, it can do it! Penny Wong tried; she had a go at cooling the planet from a room in Canberra. She was there for a little while. She has disappeared now; she is the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. She has evolved to a higher species. ‘We are going to cool this planet from a room in Canberra, and it will be a shared responsibility.’ So look to the heavens and realise that that is about to change, because the Labor Party is going to do it. The way it is going to change the temperature of the globe is with a new tax, because that is how you cool things down. If taxes made things cooler, the place would be an icebox.