Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Do not worry about it, Senator Brown—you have never returned a surplus budget. Labor would not know what it was to return a surplus budget. Nevertheless, why is the loan option not attractive? Because they are embarrassed by the amount they are borrowing at this moment. We know, of course, the response of the banks to that.

We turn then to some of the advice the government received in an inquiry recently. Mr Eslake said:

I would be concerned if every time a significant or expensive natural disaster or indeed any other exigency fell to the Australian government the response was to slug the 40 per cent of the population who are considered rich enough to bear an additional tax burden.

Professor McKibbin said:

My view is that we should always, where possible, establish good principles for economic management because when the big decisions have to be made we have a framework in which to act, whereas if we continue to do what we have always done we end up becoming a banana republic.

Where have we heard the term ‘banana republic’ before? I think it was from a previous Labor Prime Minister.

So we look then at this flood levy, the third option, that we say is totally unnecessary. What about the bureaucracy that is going to be put into place to administer it? What about the fact that the levy was called down before Cyclone Yasi hit the North Queensland coast? What do we do now? Do we increase the levy, do we increase borrowings or do we dig a bit further into cuts? What do we do when we have another natural disaster? Is the $1.8 billion cast in stone? I doubt it. And of course, as Senator Carol Brown said, there will be some in the salary brackets who will be exempted, and I intend to come back to that. Isn’t the brilliant management of this particular government wonderful?

In some of the deferrals the government have decided to defer flood mitigation work on the Bruce Highway and the Herbert River floodplain. I do not know those areas all that well but I would have thought that the highest priority should be protecting the Bruce Highway through keeping the channel of logistics and transport open and doing something about flood mitigation on the Herbert River floodplain. They ought to be highest on the priority list to do, not to cut. But, of course, that is what we see the government doing.

To secure the support of Mr Wilkie, in this case, we saw that they had already reversed one of the earlier decisions, which was about the Australian learning and teaching program. They also reversed a $365 million solar flagship and the NRAS program. And it is my understanding that Mr Katter was able to get $650 million for North Queensland flood mitigation as a result of Cyclone Yasi. At least he got something for his vote. Our good member for O’Connor, Mr Crook, got absolutely nothing. Not only did Western Australia get nothing—and I do not intend dwelling on WA, much to your surprise, Madam Acting Deputy President Kroger—but the good member got nothing for his electorate of O’Connor in giving away his vote.

This government has lost the confidence of the Australian people. We saw its waste in the Gillard memorial halls exercise. Some of us in this chamber sat and watched and wept as we learnt about the waste. In three states only—the states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria—when you took the figures per square metre for the building construction in the state schools as opposed to the independent schools, the dollars per square metre differential equated to more than $2 billion. There alone, in one project, in three states, is the equivalent of the levy that this government so shamelessly wants to visit upon some within the Australian community. In the pink batts program, magically and mystically, there was another $2 billion of waste. There were the green loans—one could go on and on. There is no confidence in this government left in the Australian people.

How then do we prioritise these projects? If there is $5.6 billion and if $1.8 billion is the levy, there is $3.8 billion left to get underway with the reconstruction programs. We have seen that the Prime Minister has gone through and made savage cuts so heroically to the budget. What are they? Cash for clunkers is one that she was ashamed of to start with. Everything that she has cut is from projects that she knows very well were dear to the heart of her predecessor, the person she marked and deposed but also the person of whose gang of four she was a member. The government has discontinued bad policies, bad funding and bad projects.

As was said earlier this evening, all this is is a tax on generosity. We are per capita the most generous country in the world when it comes to responding to natural disasters. I spoke earlier about the overwhelming response by Australians to the tsunamis that afflicted those to the north. We have seen it with Christchurch. We saw it with these floods. I would be very interested to know what the change in donations to the Queensland Premier’s flood appeal has been since 27 January, when this Prime Minister shamelessly announced the introduction of the levy.