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

To himself, yes, he gave it to himself. The Governor-General outlined an ambitious program for the 43rd Parliament, including parliamentary reform, building a stronger economy, continuing to build our education systems, developing a fair and resilient society, building regional Australia, dealing with climate change and sustainability and ensuring a whole-of-government approach to national security and international relations. This is a program that is designed to deliver a fairer society, a better society and a good society. This program builds on the responsible and effective work undertaken by Labor in government during the 42nd Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Many significant achievements contributed to moving on from over a decade of lost opportunities under the Howard government.

The Labor government met the challenge of the global financial crisis head on and avoided a recession by underpinning 210,000 jobs with expansionary fiscal policies. This was at a time when Tony Abbott was saying, ‘Do nothing. We shouldn’t move. We should wait and see what happens.’ What did we end up doing? We created half a million jobs, while the other 23 countries in the OECD shed 60 million jobs. We successfully implemented the nation’s biggest school-building program. We provided $800 million for community infrastructure projects around regional and local communities. We implemented a $5.6 billion social housing initiative—the biggest commitment by any government in Australia to social housing. We delivered tax relief to families worth $46.7 billion. We introduced Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme. We invested $4.4 billion over four years to increase the child care tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. We set the budget on track to be back to surplus by 2013, a year sooner than expected, keeping the economy strong and spending under control. We have funded 3,000 new nurse training places every year and will have an additional 1,300 GPs qualified or in training by 2015. We started rolling out trade training centres to deal with the skill shortages that the Howard government could never deal with.

Despite setbacks, we kept working to address climate change, with major investments in renewable energy technologies. We increased the age pension by more than $100 a fortnight for singles and $76 for couples. We invested in new cancer research and treatment centres around the country. We set in train investment in much needed public infrastructure like highways, rails and ports—the area of infrastructure that was ignored by the Howard government. We commenced building a national broadband network to make Australian businesses more competitive and provide domestic consumers with access to world-class broadband. Senator Conroy, you are to be congratulated on that approach, which clearly exposed the opposition for their failure to bring this country into the 21st century on broadband. We moved to create 130,000 new education training places and 50,000 university places. We developed a single national school curriculum and we stood up for Australians to ensure that the powerful mining companies paid a fair price for access to our resources. We will have $10.5 billion to fund cuts to company tax, increases in superannuation and increased investment in infrastructure.

The Labor government achieved this while maintaining our national debt at amongst the lowest of advanced countries. Our debt is the equivalent of earning $100,000 a year and borrowing $6,000. Interest rates continue to be 2.25 per cent lower than when John Howard left office. We currently have interest rates of 4.5 per cent, compared to 6.75 per cent at the end of the Howard government. Despite these achievements, we failed to articulate effectively the benefits of our policies to the Australian public. In addition, we were not prepared for a breakdown in the political consensus on climate change and the failure of the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, to take on the extremists in his party and take them with him on the need to act on global warming and climate change. We paid a heavy political price for these failures. We now have an opportunity and an obligation to redress these issues.

Before I move to the specifics of the government’s legislative program, it is important to understand that the myth of coalition economic superiority is simply that—a myth. Very late in the election campaign we learnt that the coalition had fudged its costings to the tune of $11 billion. Was it any wonder that they did not want anyone in the bureaucracy to subject their promises to any scrutiny? There are a few journalists who work in this building who are widely respected. One of them is Laura Tingle of the Australian Financial Review. On 3 September, in an unkind but very accurate assessment of the coalition’s economic competency under the headline ‘Liars and clunkheads fail budget test’ Ms Tingle concluded that the coalition, whatever the reasons behind the $11 billion hole in its election commitments, ‘are not fit to govern’. How right she was. The day before the article appeared, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, described the appearance of evidence about the coalition’s fudged election costings as, ‘an arcane argument about costings’, as if it had absolutely nothing to do with the coalition’s credibility—or lack of it—on economic management. We have now seen the result of that. We have seen the Robb-Hockey split. We have seen that under that veneer of the coalition binding together it is really like a volcano ready to blow apart. The Robb-Hockey split is one indication of that.

During the decade of lost opportunities under Howard Australia, Australia became the victim of many failures of the Liberal economic program. There was a failure of investment, with business reinvesting less than two-thirds of their profits. Business investment fell significantly under the Howard government and, as we all know, investment is essential to increase profitability and employment opportunities. There was a failure of innovation, with Australia ranking extremely low in research and development investment compared to other OECD countries. There was a failure of productivity. Despite the extremist attack on workers’ wages and conditions through Work Choices productivity declined, as the real drivers of improved productive performance are not about ripping away workers’ rights. There was a failure of development, with elaborately transformed manufacturing exports declining from approximately 23.5 per cent in 1996 to 17.5 per cent in 2007. There was a failure of competitiveness, with our net foreign investment deficit as a percent of GDP increasing from around 42 per cent in 1990 to 57 per cent in 2006.

There was a failure of balance, with Work Choices designed to deliberately skew national income from workers to business. Under Howard and Abbott, workers’ wage share declined by $30 billion per year while profits increased by $42 billion per year. There was a failure of balance. Despite the surpluses created by the mining boom, the public sector did not meet its long-term investment needs. Public fixed investment as a percentage of GDP declined from just over six per cent in 1990 to under four per cent in 2006. This resulted in an underinvestment in public facilities and infrastructure that Labor is determined to fix.

The biggest failure was a failure of sustainability. The resource-intensive nature of Australian development cannot last forever. This is now recognised by business and some in the Liberal Party, including Mr Turnbull. These are issues of economic failure from the Howard government that constrained the real capacities of the Australian economy. The Howard-Abbott government squandered the mining boom jackpot by failing to address the long-term growth and investment issues that create demand, build jobs and improve technology and productivity. The transformation of our economy demands improved competitiveness, increased balance and sustainability, and government involvement to deal with market failure and conservative government incompetence. The government’s policies are designed to improve private fixed investment, increase research and development and innovation, build public infrastructure, improve human capital through increased skills and knowledge and deal with the issues of environmental sustainability.

The Labor government have demonstrated that we have met the challenge of the global financial crisis; we must now meet the sustainability challenge. We must set about providing investment certainty in Australia and encourage the mass of private and public investment that is required to ensure that we are not left behind when the world moves to a smaller carbon footprint. The coalition has demonstrated that they are not prepared to act in the national interest and deal effectively with the economic and environmental challenges faced by this country.

Labor will continue to meet the economic challenges outlined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in his recent visit to Australia. These include recovering from the global financial crisis, addressing global imbalances, creating a more stable global financial system, creating a new global reserve system, creating a new global financial regulatory system, addressing the problems of global warming and devising a better system of global governance. If we do not deal with these issues, it will not be the billionaires and millionaires in Australia who will suffer the consequences; it will be ordinary working families battling to put food on the table and educate their kids who will face the problems of further global financial crisis. So it is absolutely essential that we deal with that. Professor Stiglitz identified some of the key problems in the international economy. He argued that before the crisis global growth was supported by bubbles, the largest in the United States. Financial innovation had allowed the bubbles to grow bigger and bad assets to be spread around the world.

For all the financial innovation that we read about, this crisis is much like how the crisis of capitalism has played out throughout history—except in the short period after World War II when most countries adopted good financial regulation. There was a mistaken view that markets were self-correcting. Markets were working at first because of good regulation, but then after deregulation it was because governments repeatedly bailed the markets out. This led to a view that regulations were not needed. Appointments were made of regulators who did not believe in regulation. The bubbles allowed everyone to live beyond their means. Governments have become used to spending fee income generated by the bubble.

It is clear that the Australian Labor government acted in a timely, targeted and temporary manner that has resulted in an economy and a view of our economic management that is the envy of the world. Despite the impacts of the global recession, Australia’s economy remains in a much stronger position than the economies of comparable countries. Faced with a choice between protecting jobs and businesses or slashing services and cutting taxes that would entrench a structural deficit, the government made the decision to put jobs first. The global recession had a big impact on economies and budgets around the world, and the final budget outcome recently announced by the Treasurer reflects that, but, thanks to the successful and timely delivery of Labor policies during the global financial crisis and the consequent recession and thanks to the fact that the government has stuck to its strict spending limits, we are on track to get the budget back to surplus in 2012-13, well ahead of every other major advanced economy.

It is a very different story in the United States—the United States that we were told for years by the coalition is the model that we should follow. They continue to face high unemployment. On 20 October the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee officially declared the US recession the longest in the post-war period. The US recession lasted 18 months and saw GDP contract by 4.1 per cent, making it not only the longest but also the deepest post-war recession. US unemployment continued to rise even after economic growth turned the corner, as tends to be the practice during recessions. The unemployment rate peaked in October at 10.1 per cent and in the 10 months since has only fallen 0.5 of a percentage point.

It could get even worse for America due to the emergence of the Tea Party movement, whose leaders are now advising the coalition in this country. The Tea Party, or at least those who seek to lead it, is made up of dangerous right-wing radicals whose leaders have deep roots in American fascism. It is a movement dedicated to disabling the democratic state and replacing it with an undemocratic corporate plutocracy. Mr. Grover Norquist, a leader of the Tea Party movement—or at least a senior advisor to them—and President of Americans for Tax Reform, a front group for the wealthy elite in the US, has come here arguing that we should seek exemption from paying taxes. He was in Canberra on Monday for meetings with members of the Liberal Party. If Mr Norquist’s interview with Leigh Sales on Lateline the other evening is anything to go by, we can expect the coalition to take on board advice to cut income and capital gains taxes for the super rich, privatise Australia Post and a host of other government services, and dismantle Australia’s superannuation system and turn it over to the merchant bankers and stockbrokers, placing at risk the retirement savings of working people. And that would just be the start for a Tea Party type coalition in this country. Here in Australia, while we face challenges of our own, we do not need an antipodean tea party to help us along.

In addition to the economic challenges, we still face the implications of man-made carbon pollution. The overwhelming view of climate scientists, including the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, is that human-induced global warming is real and presents huge challenges to the sustainability of our planet. I am sure we will hear from Senator Joyce all the fear campaigns and all the nonsense that he is famous for in politics in this country.