Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Or Mr Rudd. Actually, I think you are right, Senator Bernardi. It is probably more likely to be Mr Rudd taking over, awaiting the eventual electoral slaughter. My guess, Senator Bernardi, is that Mr Rudd will take over. He will immediately say: 'I made a mistake on the carbon tax. We're not going to introduce it and we will go to an election.' There is my tip. That might at least stop the slaughter that will happen to the Australian Labor Party. It will not change the result of the election, but it may save one or two of the senators opposite who clearly know that they will not be back here after the next election. And why? Because of the Labor Party leader's broken solemn promise and because of the financial mismanagement of this government that I highlight in this particular bill before the chamber.

The government was warned two years ago that the legislation they were then putting in place would lead to a reduction in income, and we now find that that impact was in the order of $6 billion. That is typical of the Labor Party's financial management. You will recall that when the Howard government took office in 1996 there was a $96 billion debt—some of it hidden, I might say—to greet the new Howard government. Over the next 10 years the coalition, through good management and a tightening of the belt, paid off the $96 billion and actually put another $60 billion or $70 billion into the bank—$60 billion in credit. Within three short years the Labor Party turned that $60 billion credit into a $150 billion deficit, rapidly rising towards $250 billion.

Labor's debt is costing Australians $25 million each and every day for interest alone. Can you imagine if we had $25 million every day to build a new hospital, to build a passing lane on the Bruce Highway, to reduce the passenger movement charges that the Labor Party have just increased because of their financial incompetence? Can you imagine what you could do with $25 million every day? That is the $25 million that the Labor Party are spending on interest alone to foreign lenders because of their incompetence in financial management.

That incompetence is clearly demonstrated in the bill before the parliament at the moment. Here is another $6 billion. Who in the Labor Party cares? 'It's only $6 billion—it doesn't cost us.' No-one in the Labor Party has ever had a real job, or very few of them. They have either been union officials or staffers for another politician here or in another place. Most Labor politicians do not understand what business is about. They do not understand what it is like to make your own way, to have to make your books balance, to make sure that your business earns more than it spends. Can you imagine if that applied to the government—that you had to earn more than you spent? Here we are, approaching $250 billion of debt, and the Labor Party, supported by the Greens political party, seem to think that they know what they are doing. This bill proves that they do not. They are correcting past errors. I had a lot more I wanted to say on this but, because of the truncated debate due to the guillotine put in place by Labor and the Greens, I am not going to take my full time because I know my other colleagues desperately want to speak on this bill. So I will conclude there, urging the Senate to vote against this bill for the reasons that have been mentioned.