Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Nash for her contribution. She was obviously playing to the audience, which I understand is an audience very sympathetic to Senator Nash and to Senator Macdonald over there. I am sure they enjoyed that mixed speech full of slogans and rhetoric. But that was mostly what it was. Every now and again, though, Senator Nash had to confirm that those things were facts as if somehow that actually made them facts. Let me point out a few of the things that she claimed were facts when they were not.

She talked about a number of minor matters which I do not know the detail of, like an $80,000 expenditure on consultancy. That does not sound like good money spent; but, again, I do not know the detail of that. We will have a look at it. But, when we talked about programs worth many hundreds of millions of dollars, she talked about computers in schools and talked about the blow-out. Senator Nash should know—and I think she actually does know—that there was not a blow-out in that program. The government made an extra budget allocation to compensate the schools and states for the extra IT required to implement that program. We ended up with a fantastic program when we finally got a unit cost per computer on an average of $500. The extra budgetary allocation was to ensure that we had proper, powerful IT systems in place to get maximum benefit out of those computers. It was disappointing that some of the states did not step up to the mark to assist in that very generous position that the Commonwealth government took.

Some of Senator Nash's contribution reminded me of the contribution John Howard made in the lead-up to the 2007 election. When talking about interest rates, he said interest rates would always be lower under a Liberal government than they would be under a Labor government. Well, what is the cash rate today? The cash rate today is 3.5 per cent. That is lower than the cash rate was at any time under the last Liberal-National government. Yet we hear this sort of stuff peddled all the time as if there is a problem. If you listen to Senator Nash, you would think that the economy is a basket case. Of course, that is what the Liberal-National parties want you to think. They want to talk the economy down. They want to trash it.

Let us just look at some of the fundamentals of the economy and acknowledge that the global financial crisis was real. I just refer back to some of the comments I heard Senator Fifield make. One of the things he said was, 'Even if you accept that there was a GFC' and then he went on to talk about some other things. I think there was a GFC. I do not think there is a conspiracy theory group or a GFC deniers group going on. I notice members of the National Party want to accuse the Greens of being involved in conspiracy theory groups. But there ought not to be a conspiracy theory group suggesting that there was no global financial crisis. Maybe Senator Fifield should just look to Europe, to the United States and to other parts of the developing world to see the devastation that is still occurring as a direct result of the global financial crisis. It came here as well but we have not been affected by it so much because of the actions we took as a government to mitigate its effects on our economy and our community.

Let us just look at the fundamentals of the economy, which is no basket case. Let us just look at our economy as a whole. It is 11 per cent larger now than when we came to office, despite the worst global financial conditions since the Great Depression. Our economy has been growing faster than every other single major advanced economy—0.6 per cent in the March quarter and 3.7 per cent over the year. It is a larger rise than every other economy. Our unemployment rate is 5.1 per cent. It is less than half of what it is in Europe, and it is not quite half of what it is in the United States. But it is significantly below every other advanced economy. Our inflation rate is at a 13-year low, with underlying inflation at the bottom end of the RBA's target band of around two per cent for the year through to June. As I have said, the cash rates are at 3.5 per cent—lower than at any time under the Liberal government. We have got a huge investment pipeline with a record $260 billion at an advanced stage, helping to boost the productive capacity of our economy. Consumption in the country has also been growing by about four per cent throughout the year. We have very low debt. Net debt as a percentage of GDP is peaking at around one-tenth of the level across major advanced economies.

Let me just talk about debt for a minute, because when figures are bandied around they actually sound like significant figures. When people start to talking about millions or billions of dollars, a normal household would grapple with what that means in reality. Where is it? What sort of size is that? And what does it mean in terms of the overall economy? Net debt peaked as a percentage of GDP at 9.6 per cent in 2011-12. That is around one-tenth of the level of the major advanced economies. I want to make this comparison: this is like someone earning $100,000 a year and owing 9.6 thousand dollars. That is your debt. I know my mortgage is significantly higher than that. It would be like Senator Fifield owing $20,000 on his mortgage based on his wage. That is what it is. So when people talk about those massive figures, put them into perspective. You talk about what that percentage means and you give some real-life examples. Anyone would accept that that sort of debt level is incredibly manageable. Gross debt peaked as a percentage of GDP at 18 per cent for the year 2011-12. We start paying down gross debt as a net debt percentage of GDP from 2012-13. Net interest payments in 2012-13 will be 0.5 per cent of GDP. Again, that is like someone earning $100,000 a year and paying only $500 a year in net interest. If you make that comparison, it takes it back to what an individual might own.

That is not the economy that Senator Nash and Senator Fifield were describing. This economy is strong, and it is strong because of the actions that this government took. When the global financial crisis hit the world, we were quick to act because we did not want to see the ravages from massive unemployment that would follow. We decided that we would stimulate the economy—and I will talk about that in a minute. But what did the Liberal-National Party do? They actually voted against that. They said, 'Let the market rip.' Let us look to Europe—

Senator Humphries interjecting—

Sure, Senator Humphries reminds me that in the first tranche they were supportive of some stimulation, but of course they rejected the bulk of it. They rejected what was absolutely necessary. We would have seen that stimulus completely wasted if we had not followed what the Reserve Bank governor of the day said to do, which was: if you do not spend enough early you will end up spending much more later. We took advice from Treasury and from the Reserve Bank and spent the necessary money to protect this economy. We know—and all the Treasury modelling shows this; you will only have to look at the graphs—that when the private sector investment was removed from the economy, the stimulus investment filled that gap. We actually saw that.

I know how many jobs it saved. You can look at the Treasury modelling and see that it was in excess of 200,000 jobs. I know this from personal experience because I have opened many, many BER buildings. This was a fantastic program of $16.2 billion of unprecedented spending in our education sector to support the economy. When I opened those buildings the builder would often be there. I would talk to those builders and say: 'Did this project make a difference?' And builder after builder would tell me that this program actually stopped them putting off staff or stopped their companies from going under completely. That was what they would tell us. That is what they do tell us. We know it had a massive impact. We know it saved 200,000 jobs. That is 200,000 incomes that are spent in shops and other small business that then support other employment. It has an enormous flow-on effect. It is 200,000 people that then would not be on Newstart. The impact of saving this country from the ravages of high unemployment not only has untold economic benefit for this country but also gave workers dignity. It saved people from being unemployed. It saved people the worry of having to scratch out a meagre existence to provide for their families.

At the same time—and only a Labor government would do this—when it came time for the government to reinvest in our economy, we picked education to do it in. We have left a lasting legacy. We have built school halls, classrooms, libraries and science centres across more than 10,000 schools in this country. Those buildings will be there for 20, 30, 50 and sometimes more years as a lasting legacy, a great investment in the educational future of this country and of our kids—and it was something that the opposition voted against. It was a great legacy, a great investment in our economy, and it worked absolutely. And it gives you the opportunity to say, 'Oh, what GFC?'