Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that advice, Mr Acting Deputy President—I did refer to him as the Treasurer, Mr Wayne Swan. This so-called acknowledgement has left many commentators, I would suggest, and certainly many of us up here on Capital Hill, lost for words, I have to say, given that arguably the Treasurer's greatest achievement to date has been to rack up a deficit of no less than $154 billion whilst turning $45 billion in the bank into a $110 billion credit card bill. This he seems to have accomplished with little effort. He does not seem to have had to put a lot of effort into this achievement—

Senator Sherry interjecting—

In fact, Senator Sherry, it is one of the things that you have done extremely well. We have seen—

Senator Sherry interjecting—

You see—you just scratch the surface a little and those sitting on the other side get very agitated about this. We have seen a historic level of government incompetence and mismanagement which has seen billions of dollars of Australians taxpayers' money flushed down the toilet.

With the surplus that was left by the former Howard-Costello government, Treasurer Wayne Swan went on a spending spree in the pursuit of stimulating the economy. We have acknowledged that the purpose of it was to— in his words—'stimulate the economy'. But he did it seemingly without any consideration for value for money or long-term benefits for Australia. I remind this chamber—with Senator Mason here, because he has prosecuted the case very effectively in this chamber—about the waste and mismanagement and total lack of consideration in formulating the so-called Building the Education Revolution. That program saw a focus on flash new school halls—sparkling amenities—but no real public policy consideration of how that would actually raise the education levels of our kids. It has not raised education standards and we have seen that in the recent results. It has had no impact on the education standards achieved by Australian students.

Let us not forget the Green Loans scheme and the pink batts debacle. We are still paying for that debacle and there are still to this day many households with electrified roofs. Then there is the shambolic way in which they are still dealing with the asylum seeker crisis. We discuss in this chamber every day this appalling state where we have a flotilla of boats coming to this country, and it is costing taxpayers an extra billion dollars a year just to maintain the status quo without actually fixing the problem. We are not going to the root of the problem—we have a continuing crisis in this area and the whole thing is being dealt with in a shambolic way.

Indeed, one can only congratulate the Treasurer for this accolade given the extraordinary financial recklessness of this government. What a great achievement it is. I would encourage those listening to this broadcast today to google the recipients of Euromoney honours. It makes for interesting reading. We find former awardees include corporations such as Lehman Brothers who, as we know, went belly up in 2007, taking the hard-earned cash of many Americans with them. It was the largest bankruptcy in US history. So the Treasurer, in being given this award, is amongst very distinguished company. The global financial services firm Morgan Stanley and the megabank Citigroup have both received honourable mentions, and yet they were bailed out by the US government in the latter stages to prevent their collapse. Whilst I would not suggest I am any soothsayer, I do not think that the Treasurer is necessarily standing in very good company.

Given the economic climate around the globe, who would have been possible contenders for this award? It is a reasonable question to ask.