Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must congratulate Senator Ronaldson, the previous speaker, for clearing the gallery. That family with the two kids he mentioned in his speech could not stand the hypocrisy for one minute longer, so off they went. It was a fantastic clearing of the gallery. Well done, Senator Ronaldson.

Let me talk about the budget approach of the government. The budget approach of this government is to make sure that we build the economy, have a strong economy and build a fair society. It is pretty simple. It is about building a fair society. It is about understanding that the market cannot deliver on its own, that there is market failure and that government needs to intervene in the market. That is exactly what the government has done.

If you go back and have a look at the so-called great economic record of the Howard government, what you will see is a record of abject failure. Business investment collapsed under the Howard government. International investment was not made here under the Howard government. There was a failure of innovation that is so important to our economy. We were amongst the lowest spenders on research and development in advanced economies. That is the record of the Howard government: a failure of productivity. Productivity declined under the Howard government. We hear all these lectures about productivity and yet under the Howard government productivity declined. We were amongst the lowest in OECD countries in productivity. And what was their answer to low productivity? It was Work Choices. That was the answer to low productivity. Cut workers’ penalty rates, cut family standards of living, get rid of annual leave loading, get rid of rights on the job and get rid of penalty rates. That was the record of the Howard government. That was your economic policy, an economic policy based on attacking working families in this country. There was a failure of development, a total reliance on the minerals and mining sector for this economy.

Under the Howard government the export share of elaborately transformed manufactures fell from 23½ per cent to 17½ per cent, so the knowledge industry, the manufacturing industry, declined under the Howard government. There was a failure of competitiveness. Our current account deficit continued to rise. There was a failure of balance and what you did with Work Choices was to transfer $30 billion a year of workers’ wages to profits that were then not reinvested. That is what you did. Those profits went into the back pockets of the billionaires and millionaires, and you stood back and applauded that approach.

Your biggest failure was to fail to deal with the issue of long-term sustainability not only of the economy but of the environment. Now we know why you failed to deal with it because all the extremists, the climate change deniers and the climate change sceptics that dominate the Liberal party would not even let John Howard deal with the issue of climate change. Now you have the wrecker in charge—your leader, Mr Tony Abbott, is nothing but a wrecker. That is what you have in your leadership now. He would wreck the economy, he would wreck our chances to try and deal with climate change and he would wreck workers’ rights. You know that is the position because that is where you fundamentally come from. You fundamentally come from a position that says that workers will sacrifice to improve productivity and workers will sacrifice to increase profitability for business. That is where the wreckers are. You are the wreckers.

You demonstrated your total lack of economic competence. In the period that you were in government there was over a decade of lost opportunities when the money was flowing in from the mining boom but the coalition were incapable as a government of actually making the investment for the future. You did not invest in education, you did not invest in skills and you did not invest in the industries that built the knowledge for the future. You were an abject economic failure, an absolute rabble masquerading as competent economic managers. But the game was up for you. There were 10 interest rate rises in a row. You know that you were never competent to run the economy.

We have a coalition that is incapable of actually framing an independent economic agenda. If the Australian ever goes belly up and closes down, you will have no economic agenda because your agenda relies on the commentators in the Australian. This resolution before us today is straight off the front page of the Australian newspaper. That is where it is from. Every question you ask on economics, every position you adopt in economics is straight out of the Australian playbook. That is where you come from. You are incapable of developing decent economic policy for this country. The Australian front page is really the proxy for your economic competence. If you want to know what the Liberals and the coalition are going to be up to, read the front page of the Australian and that is what you get in this place all the time. You do not get any innovation, there are no policies that would support working families.

The proposition that you have put up in this resolution goes to the fundamental difference between Labor and the coalition. You are the wreckers in this parliament. You are clearly the wreckers. We are about building for the future. Your position is to let the market rip. How else could you justify the position that you adopted when we were facing the global financial crisis and your economic spokesperson was saying, ‘We should just wait and see what happens.’ When the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and governments around the world were saying that you must intervene in the economy and take steps to maintain economic activity, what did the coalition do? The coalition said, ‘We should wait and see what happens.’ What an abject failure of economic leadership from this so-called economically brilliant opposition. You are absolute economic phoneys and you know it because you could not deliver on the key factors that build the economy.

You have the cheek to come in here and criticise a Labor government that has underpinned 210,000 jobs and created half a million jobs. When countries around the world are looking to put more investment in to try and create jobs, we are seen as the economy that delivered, the government that delivered. We are the government that made this economy absolutely clear of recession. There was no recession in Australia and recessions in almost every other country in the world. What you wanted to do was to run the line that you got from the economic radicals in New York—the Tea Party. You had the ‘tea party’ out here telling you how you should take up your next political position. You know it is true. You had them out here and you are all about cutting government expenditure. It does not matter if government expenditure is—