Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The contributions to this debate from the government senators have been particularly worrying, and the worrying thing about them I think is that they believed what they were saying. I think they honestly think that if they just keep repeating the mantra of paying back the deficit three years early it will actually come true. Perhaps they forget that we went through the—very tortuous, these days—process of Senate estimates, where, in committee after committee after committee, the government had to admit that they had not met the deadline on anything that they were proposing—not on superclinics, not on anything. They cannot meet a deadline. They are not capable of it. Why would we think that, on something as important as reducing the deficit, they could actually improve on their deadline?

So what we have is the senators opposite repeating mantras, and thinking that if they set up these straw men and then knock them over they have actually achieved something. It has taken a long time for the government to continue to try and build up the global financial crisis as the greatest catastrophe of our time because then they could be terribly ‘successful’ at controlling it. What a laugh! This economy was in far, far better shape, as other opposition speakers have already pointed out; the contribution of China towards our economy was at least as important as, if not more important than, the so-called economic stimulus.

I must admit: given some of the ducks-and-drakes games that are being played, with new tax measures being counted as savings by this federal government, I am reminded more of the state Labor governments. I am reminded even more of the state Labor governments’ habits of getting into the hollow logs and digging out whatever they can when we think back to the Medibank Private raid that this government undertook. Labor is in a mess. Labor’s management of the economy and of fiscal policy is in a mess.

There is no doubt whatsoever that excessive government spending is placing upward pressure on interest rates. It is time the government started to pay off the debt, not continue to accumulate it at $100 million a day. That is what is causing the problems. We have a $41 billion deficit along with an economy that is running close to capacity and employment running at almost full levels. They are overdoing it; they are over stimulating the economy. When the Howard-Costello government were managing the economy, the same group—Mr Swan, Ms Gillard and others—opposed almost everything that we did. From tax reform to privatisation, from waterfront to fiscal consolidation, they said no, no, no every time. Now we have a fiscal policy that is in complete opposition to the policy of the Reserve Bank. They are putting pressure on interest rates. This will continue until they can see reality, until they can stop believing their own spin and actually concentrate on the real issues at hand.

They can repeat over and over that the global financial crisis was the greatest catastrophe of our time, but it is not going to make it true. We currently have a situation where we have one shrill redhead evoking the memory of another shrill redhead. Can I suggest to the prime ministerial redhead that what she needs to do is look to her own mismanagement of the budget and fiscal policy—because she knows that, if interest rates keep going up at the same rate as they are right now, she will be as dead a duck as her predecessor.