Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In 2011-12, was it a surplus or deficit? I can see you hazarding a guess there, Madam Acting Deputy President. It was a deficit. I will take the interjection from Senator Collins, who said, 'We might call him to order.' What could be more unparliamentary than pointing out with budget papers which budgets are in surplus and which are in deficit. I know it is excruciatingly embarrassing, but there you have it. That is the key indicator, the key measure, of competence which this government is being judged on. Despite being promised, despite being forecast, surpluses have not eventuated. As we knew he would, this year Wayne Swan got to the dispatch box and projected a budget surplus, but it is nothing more than a projection. We will not know what the final budget outcome is until September next year, which rather conveniently occurs after the next election.

That is why we are here. This motion seeks to give precedence to debate about a budget measure that will bring forward spending from next financial year to this financial year. The reason it is doing that, apart from being a bit of a sop to cover the cost of the carbon tax on households, is to manufacture, fabricate and create the illusion of a real budget surplus. Why has the government gone to such links to do that? Why has it gone to such lengths to shift, to fiddle, to fudge and to frame this budget? It knows that the surplus or, rather, I should say, consecutive deficits have been the key measure of competence upon which it has been judged. It is going all out, to all lengths, to manufacture, to create, to fabricate, to frame a budget surplus. In order to do that it has to seek to deny this chamber the opportunity to properly examine the education bonus legislation. Two things are in conflict here. There is the need to provide appropriate scrutiny to legislation—that is the role of the Australian Senate. Going in the other direction is this government's need to fabricate a surplus. To do that it needs to bring forward spending, but to get that money out it needs to pass this legislation quick smart.

We are finding, yet again, that pragmatism, politics and partisan self-interest triumph over the obligations and duties of the government to provide the opportunity for appropriate scrutiny of legislation. We always know that when you put pragmatism, politics and self-interest against parliamentary accountability, for the Australian Labor Party pragmatism and self-interest will win out every time. Every time, Labor will try to dress up self-interest and pragmatism as the national interest. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard a Labor member or senator talk about doing things in the national interest. But saying you are doing something in the national interest does not make it in the national interest. It does not matter how many times you say it; it does not make it true. No matter how many times you say it, the Australian public are not going to buy it. The Australian public are not going to buy that this proposed education bonus is in the national interest. They will see it for exactly what it is: a con and a sham designed to try to further mask the effects of the carbon tax on households. The Australian people will see it as a con and a sham in order to fabricate a budget surplus.

This government always succumbs to temptation. Whenever there is put before it the temptation to do a budget fiddle, it will take it. Whenever there is put before it the temptation to deny parliamentary scrutiny, it will take it. Whenever there comes before it the temptation to put partisan self-interest ahead of the national interest, it will take that opportunity. One of the things about being in government is that there are all sorts of options before you. There are all sorts of temptations, if you are a government, to look to your own party interest rather than to the national interest. We have seen as a pattern—week in, week out; month in, month out; year in, year out; budget in, budget out—since this government has been in office that it has always defaulted to its own interest. It has always defaulted to politics. It has always defaulted, on occasion, to being not entirely straightforward, I hate to say. Parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary accountability are the furthest things from its mind. We know that they conduct themselves in a different manner in the other place, and we know that they have their own issues with certain members of that chamber. We know they have those, and I do not want to go there. But we have always hoped that in this chamber we do things better. We have always hoped that we are a real house of review and that we shine the sunlight on legislation that is needed. If this motion is passed, this chamber will yet again be failing in its duties, in its prerogatives and in its obligations. We on the opposition side will not be a party to that. We will not be complicit in that endeavour. It is for those reasons that I think it is very important that this motion, be it a procedural one, should be defeated.