Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

In the answers to these questions today we have seen another example of Labor's lack of credibility on fiscal matters being reflected in their lack of charity and in their lack of honesty. The simple point is that no-one believes this government on fiscal matters and, in particular, no-one believes it when it attacks the previous government, because the fiscal scoreboard says it all. When this government came to office, $96 billion in debt had been paid off—and more than $80 billion of it had been run up under the previous Labor government. There was $70 billion in the Future Fund—money that has been put aside for the public sector superannuation liabilities run up under governments over 30 years. And there was a surplus of more than $20 million that Labor could bank in their first year. All of this was the result of the policies of the previous government.

The point to be made about Labor's lack of charity is that the previous government and the previous Prime Minister and Treasurer, John Howard and Peter Costello, always gave credit to the Hawke government for some of its measures in liberalising Australia's economy. They always gave it credit for cutting tariffs and deregulating the financial markets, and they always pointed out that those measures were supported by the coalition and by the Liberal Party at the time, particularly under John Howard's leadership. But we never get such charity, we never get such intellectual honesty, from the Labor Party, because in a desperate desire to somehow construct some credibility they must tear down the record of others.

But the fiscal scoreboard is honest. The fiscal scoreboard actually outlines the numbers this government inherited and it tells us where they have taken us now. I am not surprised, after having spent a few years here, that the Labor Party oppose measures to balance the budget. They particularly seem to be focused at the moment on opposing those measures at the state level, where state coalition governments have come to office in order to clean up the messes left by Labor governments. The reason Labor must oppose measures to balance budgets is that I do not think they ever do it. The record of Labor at a federal level and at a state level is one of debt, one of deficit, one of deferring hard times to future generations and one of leaving a mess for others to clean up.

I have seen the confected outrage from the other side, talking about how there are public sector jobs going in certain states. But why do I see no outrage about the 50 jobs that Labor is trying to abolish at the moment—the 50 jobs for the people who were going to work on the Abel Tasmanor about the people who are losing their jobs because of the carbon tax? We never, ever hear Labor being upset about those jobs. We only hear the ALP being upset about public sector jobs. I have to ask myself: is it because the people working on the Abel Tasman are not union members? Is it because they are not organised and cannot march down a street in colourful T-shirts—they do not present a pretty picture for television? But we never, ever hear the outrage over people like that, in this case long-term unemployed people, losing their jobs.

We only hear confected outrage from the Labor Party about public servants losing their jobs.

This government has no credibility when it comes to financial matters. It has been using the global financial crisis that was severe but did not hit Australia as hard as it did other places. There were multiple reasons it did not hit Australia as hard as other places. There was confidence in our fiscal situation, a situation this government inherited; there were solid regulations of banks and financial institutions that meant they did not get themselves into trouble as those in Europe and North America did; and there was demand for our resources, so our terms of trade were going through. But this government still uses the global financial crisis as a veil behind which to hide it its irresponsibility. This government wasted billions on a crisis that did not hit our shores as hard. The number of jobs that Labor claimed they were going to create were suddenly jobs that had been saved, but no evidence whatsoever has ever been produced to demonstrate that.

The second $42 billion stimulus package stands particularly condemned for being some of the greatest waste that this government and country have ever seen. We saw waste in pink batts and school halls and we saw the misdirection of funds, with dead people receiving $900 cheques from the government. The government compounded the problem by not listening and not withdrawing the stimulus earlier when it became obvious to everyone that it was not needed in our economy and was overheating it. This is to say nothing about the fact that there is still a great question about whether such stimulus packages even work. Whether or not we can stimulate an economy by removing or borrowing money and simply spraying it around is still a question that has not been established. The evidence of what is happening around the rest of the world today says that. This is a government whose history and record demonstrate fiscal incompetence. And taxes will eventually go up under this government; it is just a question of when.

Question agreed to.