Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am, of course, speaking now to take your slot in the debate, as you are in the chair. I am pleased to facilitate that so you do not miss out on an opportunity to speak in this debate. For those who may be listening and wondering what this debate is about, the coalition have moved:

That the Senate notes that after more than 3 years in office and a change in Prime Minister, the Government still has not found its way and continues to fail to deliver on its commitments to the Australian people—

which of course is arrant nonsense. We have heard from Senator Stephens the long lists of achievements of this government since Labor was elected in 2007. I intend to go over those subjects again, because it is a tremendous opportunity for a government senator to talk about our achievements.

In a very short space of time this reformist government, which has been faced with a major international financial crisis, and now is faced with major reconstruction issues arising out of natural disasters, is taking the responsible position of saying: the Commonwealth has to play a role in those matters, the Commonwealth has a responsibility to the Australian people to deliver outcomes that give the best possible circumstances to Australians. In the case of the international financial crisis, this means people keeping their jobs; people keeping their homes; and businesses not going broke, being able to borrow money and being able to continue to operate and not have to dismiss their employees.

One of the key things that Labor did in response, firstly, to the global financial crisis, was to make sure that Australian banks had enough credibility in the international market to be able to borrow internationally and to continue to lend to business. One should not underestimate how important that action was from the Labor government. You only have to talk to businesspeople about that time, when there was a lot of uncertainty in the market about whether business could get loans. In fact, the real uncertainty was whether Australian banks could continue with enough liquidity so that (a) they could continue to lend and, perhaps more importantly, (b) they did not need to call in loans to repay those that were coming up for renewal. Think about the consequences of Australian banks at that time saying to their business customers, ‘You know those loans that we gave you? You have to pay them back’, with no-one else lending the money to allow the liquidity for those businesses to do that. That would have meant businesses closing. It would have meant businesses laying off employees. It would have meant bankruptcies. It would in fact have meant businesspeople losing all of their assets, because banks would have then had to foreclose on them and try and sell them up in the worst possible circumstances. That was one of the first actions that this government took in response to the global financial crisis.

In an important step, and a step which underlines the economic credibility of this government, the next thing this government did was to ensure that there was enough money in the economy to keep businesses afloat—and that meant spending. This government’s initiatives in that regard seemed initially to receive support from the coalition, but then that support was withdrawn. It appears that the philosophy of the coalition was: let the market decide who survives; let the market decide who keeps their job; let the market decide, of those who lose their job, who loses their house. The reality was that, without Labor’s stimulus, it is widely accepted that there would have been more than 200,000 extra people added to the unemployment list. That is two MCGs full of people added to the unemployment list. That is what the coalition’s position on the stimulus would have meant. The reality is that that probably would have meant 100,000-plus people being in the position of losing their homes or being out on the street, not being able to afford their health insurance or not being able to pay their bills. There would have been a massive increase in the Commonwealth’s responsibility for unemployment payments, so we would have had to pay money out anyway. With businesses closing, there would have been a massive reduction in taxation receipts from the business sector, and a flow-on of consequences that would have meant parlous circumstances for many in the Australian economy—and, inevitably, a government deficit, despite not spending money on stimulus. So, spending on the stimulus meant an initial deficit, but it meant that a lot of people did not go into deficit and families did not lose their jobs and their homes, businesses did not close—and the Australian economy now is the envy of the world.

I was in New York at the end of last year and when talking to diplomats from the European Union, the United States or from many other parts of the world, there was a lot of envy about the position of the Australian economy. Australian government debt is very small by world standards and very manageable. Indeed, this government has given a commitment that the budget will be back in surplus. We will pay the debt off, and we will not have put the Australian people through the sorts of calamities that were the inevitable consequence of the proposal of the coalition that we just let the market provide. That policy was comparable to the approach of the Bush administration to the Lehman Brothers situation. The Bush administration and their officials decided that Lehman Brothers could go to the wall, sink or swim, and that the market should decide. That led to the global financial crisis.

The short documentary that won the Academy Award recently talks about the circumstances of the Bush administration’s response to the crisis. It talks about a lot of corruption in the American financial system as well. It talks about the response of the Bush administration officials to the Lehman Brothers circumstances and then the about face that they took when it became apparent that allowing Lehman Brothers to fail was going to cause a domino effect and force many other financial institutions in the United States to fall over and indeed force consequences on the rest of the world.

Australia has a government that has achieved economic certainty and positive economic outcomes for its people. We supported jobs. On top of all of that, we have cut taxes. Someone earning $50,000 today is paying $1,750 less in tax per year than they were in 2007. With all of that, we have cut tax for people at that level and throughout the economy. We have also provided a significant increase in pensions, particularly for single pensioners—an increase of more than $100 for single pensioners and $76 for couples. That was long overdue. It has made the life of many pensioners better. I am not saying that pensioners do not deserve more—they do. It has always been a case of the government paying what it felt that it could afford to. This government felt that they deserve more and we could afford to pay more, so we did.

We also boosted the First Homeowners Grant, which has helped an additional 250,000 people to buy their first home. If you remember, we also inherited extraordinarily high interest rates that were having deleterious effects on some markets in our economy. They have fallen and they are nowhere near the levels that we inherited from the Howard government. We have increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and from a maximum of $4,350 a year to $7,500 a year. So to say that we have not been delivering for the Australian people, as is suggested in this resolution, is nonsense.

Who is introducing for the first time ever paid parental leave? This government. The previous government had 12 years. The position of current Leader of the Opposition during the time he was a minister in the Howard government was that paid parental leave would be introduced over his dead body. His position has changed since, but the reality was that it took a Labor government to take the steps to introduce paid parental leave for the first time in this country. It was long overdue. We have now caught up with many parts of the rest of the world. No doubt, over the years that policy position will see improvements in benefits as the country can afford them.

We provided for additional tax deductible for small business during the global financial crisis—another important economic move—for investment in new productive assets, such as new machinery. This was part of the stimulus process but also very important for the continued viability of small businesses, such as trades and farmers. Many in the community have benefited from that. We also made some key improvements in education, in health and in developing our infrastructure.

I want to go back to the question of our nation building stimulus program, because we could probably consider that further in this debate. When I said that not providing the stimulus that Labor provided would have meant that 200,000 additional people would have been out of work, I should have also said that instead of that circumstance there are 715,000 more Australians in jobs today than when this government took office. So instead of there being 200,000 fewer people in jobs, there are 715,000 more people in jobs than when we took office. The economy has grown by more than $167 billion and we are now the second richest economy in the G20—that is the top 20 economies—in per capita terms. While we understand that there are significant cost-of-living pressures on families, underlying inflation in this country is at its lowest level in five years. These are the economic indicators that I say totally refute the proposition contained in the motion moved in the name of Senator Fifield and to which Senator Cormann spoke at the beginning of this debate.

Sometimes the employment figures and the unemployment figures can be affected by the participation rate. If you have a low participation rate, which probably indicates that some people have given up looking for work, you sometimes also get a lower unemployment rate. But in this case our reforms have seen record numbers of people enter the workforce, with participation rates at a record high of 65.9 per cent in October last year. Reaching a record high in a period of low unemployment is an indicator that there is no falsity in the figure as a representation of the unemployment circumstances.

The other issue I think we need to touch upon is that in addition to the pension improvements since September 2009 that I spoke about—$115 a fortnight for single pensioners and around $97 a fortnight for pensioner couples—we provided economic stimulus payments to more than three million pensioners and self-funded retirees to fend off the impact of the global financial crisis. We also increased the amount of the pension that can be advanced to $1,005.75 for singles and $758.10 for each member of a couple in a six-month period, which can be important. We provided a new $785 seniors supplement for self-funded retirees. We increased the utilities allowance by $400, and we are letting single, older Australians earn up to $30,685 in this financial year without paying income tax or the Medicare levy through the senior Australians tax offset and three rounds of tax cuts.

We have also provided national transport concessions so that state seniors card holders get concessions when they travel interstate. We have provided eligibility to the Commonwealth seniors health card and the $785 seniors supplement for up to 8,400 more self-funded retirees through a new standard $500 tax deduction that reduces taxable incomes. We have provided a 50 per cent tax discount on up to $1,000 of interest income earned on savings products, including bank accounts—a 50 per cent tax break for the first $500 of interest on savings from 1 July 2010, increasing on 1 July the following year to 50 per cent on the first $1,000 of interest. This is quite an impressive record in three years of government. I have no hesitation in saying that after 12 years in government the coalition cannot claim anything like that rate of improvement and certainly, in proportionate terms, nowhere near it for retirees, pensioners and self-funded retirees.

It is not just the present and the past that Labor has a plan for and we have made decisions not only for the future structure of the economy. The National Broadband Network is a visionary program. The National Broadband Network will see developments through the distribution of access to high-speed internet broadband services for health, education, business, entertainment, pure communication and probably a lot of things that we have not even thought of throughout this country. Some people have sought to compare our level of development and internet speeds with those of countries like South Korea. In terms of geography and population dispersion, there is no comparison, of course. South Korean population centres would fit well into the state of Victoria, whereas Australia has one of the larger land masses in the world for a single country. In those terms, to be able to get high-speed fibre cable servicing 93 per cent of the population at the end of this project will be compared properly with the development of the railways in this country at the end of the 19th century and with the development of the telephone service after the Second World War.

This will be a major economic benefit. We do not yet fully understand the services we will derive from it, but we do know enough about it to know that there will be major benefits in the areas of health, education, entertainment and communications. At the end of the day, according to the business case, this will return a dividend to government. I do not think you can make a case to oppose it, yet we hear those opposite attempting to do that at every turn, at every excuse. I think that is a great shame. (Time expired)