Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It was theCanberra Times, actually—unless you are opposed to them as well! Where do they fit? Are they good? You have just attacked the Australian. How does theCanberra Times rate? Give me a hint. We know you hate the Australian. How about the Canberra Times? I am sure a few of them are listening. How do you rate them? Are they good or bad? Are they like the Australian according to you or are they different? I rather suspect that you are a very keen supporter of the Canberra Times, so you will be a little shocked when I read this. But before I get to that I want to say this. Not in some 50 minutes of a speech that, in the defence of the Governor-General, was not written by her—we all know that—was there one word about cutting government expenditure. There was not one single word in a 50-minute government prepared speech about cutting expenditure to ensure that we do not keep this upward pressure on interest rates. Clearly this government has no intention at all of doing anything about reducing the potential impact on Australian families.

Senator Cameron comes, like I do, from a state which is completely different from Western Australia and Queensland. Senator Cameron knows as well as I do that the small business community in New South Wales and Victoria is under enormous pressure. Those in retail in particular are under enormous pressure. I defy anyone in this chamber or the other place to go into a small business, particularly a retail based small business, in Victoria, New South Wales or Tasmania—Senator Barnett is here—and say that that business is not under enormous pressure. They will be under even greater pressure if we see a surge in interest rates on the back of a failure of this government to cut government expenditure.

I notice in the gallery that there is a family with two young children. This family will potentially be the losers, with higher interest rates. I do not know the couple I am looking at with their children; I do not know their circumstances, but I rather suspect that they are probably average Australians, like the people in this chamber, who will be unduly impacted by an increase in interest rates if it is not backed by the sort of economic growth that we should hope to see to try to counter some of those impacts.

I will read from the Canberra Times some comments in an article by David McLennan. He said:

The Government has rejected—

and I am being quite open and transparent with what I am quoting—

a respected forecaster’s prediction that the budget will only briefly return to surplus, but the Opposition has seized on the finding as proof “Australia is facing years and years of budget deficits”.

Access Economics’ latest Budget Monitor predicted the nation’s accounts would fall back into deficit after a brief return to surplus in 2010-13 because of declining commodity prices.

The article goes on:

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said the report showed the budget was built on quicksand.

“It’s undeniable now that because the Government is spending all of the proceeds of the mining boom, Australia is facing years and years of budget deficits, which means more and more debt from Labor that will never be repaid,” he said. “Unless Labor pulls back on its spending, Australians are facing higher interest rates and higher taxes.”

Indeed, if you go through all the economic commentary in the last week, you will see another article from David McLennan yesterday titled ‘Commodity boom ‘house of cards’’ and an article from David Uren today in the Australian. I know that Senator Cameron has a passionate hatred of the Australian but I am sure he is not indicating that that is a personal attack on the bona fides of Mr Uren, because I would have thought David Uren is viewed by most people as being a good economic commentator and a reasonable economic commentator—a very reasonable economic commentator. He has indicated the very things that we are talking about. We are just about to venture down a path that this Prime Minister will have no control over. This Prime Minister will have no control over it because this is the same Prime Minister who drove the Building the Education Revolution fiasco. This is the same Prime Minister who was incapable of addressing the pink batts debacle. This is a Prime Minister who quite frankly, I suspect, does not care what the impact of higher interest rates is because this is a Prime Minister who gave to the Governor-General yesterday a 50-minute speech that made no mention of it whatsoever. (Time expired)