Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

We are getting towards the middle of the year, towards Christmas in July. There are only three things I wish for Christmas in July. Wish No. 1 is for the Labor Party to keep Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister. They must keep Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister. Wish No. 2 is that the carbon tax must remain the Labor Party's central plank, their central policy. Wish No. 3 is that they must continue to tell people that having $300 billion hocked up on the nation's credit card is not a problem. If I can have all three wishes, I will be a happy person but will not be in opposition for much longer. The only thing I could think of that would be better than that is if they were to make Craig Thomson Australian of the Year, but I do not think that is going to happen. This is really a statement about the complete financial ineptitude of this government and showing the Australian people just how ludicrous it has become.

I woke up this morning and heard that France has elected a socialist Prime Minister who is going to remove himself from the austerity measures that had been negotiated, and therefore the whole austerity plan in Europe is looking like it is going to fall over. I found out that Greece is one step worse—they do not even appear to really have a government at this current time. And the Germans do not seem too keen to keep on bailing people out. Then I read in our own budget papers that we are talking about an 11 per cent increase in our revenue streams. This is marvellous! It is a heroic outcome! Then we see that, as always, they are trying to sneak through the debt. It is easy for people to understand that, if you owe money, you must pay it back. There are no tricks to this. I tried. I thought: 'Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Today I will ask the finance minister of the Commonwealth of Australia a very simple question that any person who has any basic understanding of commerce and finance would understand, which is: what is your peak debt position?' Any person working in a bank will tell you that that is a fundamental question for any credit paper: what is the peak debt position? The minister's answer is there for posterity. You can watch it any time you want. It is the most agonising three minutes of film you will ever see—Penny Wong trying to answer the most basic fundamental question. A loan officer in a bank would be able to answer, but the finance minister of the Commonwealth of Australia could not.

Why are we giving ourselves a $300 billion overdraft? Why are we getting a $300 billion credit limit? These people who cannot answer the most basic question always run to something else. They said: 'It is not the gross debt, you see. It is the net debt.' It is so easy to fix it—change three simple letters and everything is better. I am curious. I am a very curious person, so I thought I would have a look. I thought: 'Here is our gross debt position. It is $274.231 billion.' You can buy a few Smarties for that. Our net debt was $143.345 billion. That is where they have latched on to it. I thought, 'We have to drill down through this to find out where this figure comes from.' I followed their accountancy statements and went up to the notes where they give the calculation that net debt equals the sum of deposits held, government securities, loans and other borrowings minus the sum of cash deposits, advances paid, investments, loans and placements.

I thought 'loans and placements' was interesting and I wondered how much we had there. There was over $100 billion in loans and placements. I thought I had better start digging through that and see what was going on there. I thought, 'Let's find out what is happening in loans and placements.' So I went and found it in their notes—$107 billion. It is made up of $30.6 billion of investments and deposits. Okay, I will grant you that. You can have that. Book it. There is an IMF quota of $8.8 billion. Well, I do not know about that. I thought I would have a close look at that. Then we have the other one—$68.3 billion of 'other'. It is like sundries. They have said: 'These are other things we do not quite know about, so we will just bang them under "other". If we bang them under "other" no-one will ask. No-one will ever inquire.' What is this 'other'? If this 'other' has $68.3 billion in it, you should grab some of that 'other' and put it in your account. Then you will not have to extend your overdraft limit. Problem solved. If this 'other' is there and the net debt is correct then grab some of the 'other' and put it in your account and therefore you will not have to increase the overdraft to $300 billion. But I think you will find you actually cannot grab that 'other' because it stands for 'other people's money'—predominantly public servant superannuants—and they do not like the idea of you using their money to pay off your debt.

This is the most dangerous thing. A Prime Minister can be fixed. We can forget about Craig Thomson. We can close our eyes and Peter Slipper disappears. When we get to government we will get rid of the carbon tax. But the debt—