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

What can we say about a government which has got things so far wrong over so many years? What is the consistent message? The only consistent message you can take away is that it is consistently wrong. We are in excess of $60 billion away from where it was predicted we would be four years ago, at the start of this budget estimates period. Remember the backslapping, the hugging in the chamber and everybody clapping last year—they were going to have a surplus of $1 billion; Mr Swan, the Treasurer of Australia, was a genius! Then, of course, it turned into possibly a smaller surplus. Then it turned into a deficit. Then it turned into a rather large deficit. Now I think it has turned into the fourth biggest deficit in our nation's history. And you have got to remember that even that is not the final figure. The final figure will come out in September.

What can you say about a government that went through the $75 billion debt ceiling? Then we had a temporary extension of the debt ceiling—because China apparently was going to go into recession—to $200 billion. Then the temporary extension became a permanent extension to a quarter of a trillion dollars. Then they went through the quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar debt ceiling. Now we have got a $300 billion debt ceiling. Now we are drawn $272.8 billion against that ceiling. Now we look into the budget estimates and, even by the government's own figures, they say that at the end of the budget estimates period the market value of our debt will be $370 billion. How on earth do we pay this money back? Where does this money come from?

I hear so many people saying about debt: 'It's just an argument in sophistry. It doesn't really matter. It's not really important.' You have to grimace when they tell you: 'It's all right. You'll get through the day.' It is not like that, because debt has to be repaid. Eighty-two per cent of this money is owed to people overseas, people who really want it back, like the Chinese and the people in the Middle East, provident people who save. They actually want the money back and we will have to pay them the money back. Where is that money going to come from? It is going to come from the people listening to this today. It is going to come from them.

What happens if we cannot pay it back? What happens if we cannot extend the debt ceiling? What happens if our credit rating goes down? What happens if we do not extend that debt ceiling and we go up to it? The cheques bounce. What does that mean? Let us look at it, because the best way to understand that is to go down to some of the intricacies of what happens when you go out the back door. We believe that health care should be public and it should be free. Well, you cannot have that when you go out the back door. We believe that education should be free. Well, you cannot have that when you run out of money. We believe that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—so you can get subsidised cancer treatment—is a great thing, but you cannot have that when you run out of money. That is what happens. That is why it is immoral to run out of money. It is immoral because of the hurt it causes. That is why this government has been so hopeless—this Greens-Labor Party-Independent amalgam, this peculiarity of the Australian political system, this thing that has driven the finances of our nation into the dirt. It is such a peculiar beast.

We must acknowledge that this government is not just a Labor government. By themselves, they could not govern. With just the Labor Party and the Greens, they could not govern. They govern because they have the support of the Independents—in particular, Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott. That is how they govern. That is why it is genuinely a Green-Labor Party-Independent government. If we are to change the government, we must change Green members of the lower house, Labor members of the lower house and Independent members of the lower house. It is the only way it is going to work.

How we can take any of them seriously, when we have seen the catastrophic effects on our defence budget? Our defence budget—it must be one of the primary jobs, to protect the sovereignty of the nation—is now at its lowest levels, in GDP terms, since 1938. How can we run a platform to deal with the requirements of 21st century warfare, to protect our borders and protect our nation, when we have run out of money? Where did the money go? Where has it all gone? What have we got to show for it?

They say that they saved us from the global financial crisis; what a load of rubbish. If you want to know how we got saved from the global financial crisis, it requires a discussion of geology—little black rocks and little red rocks. The little red rock is called iron ore, from Western Australia. They put them on the boat and the good people of South-East Asia buy lots of them. The black rock is coal, predominately from Queensland. It goes on the boat and the same good people buy it. There are also wheat crops. They are the sorts of things that got us out of the global financial crisis, not ceiling insulation or school halls. It is an absurdity to suggest that that was what saved us or that we somehow singlehandedly rebooted the global economy with ceiling insulation and $900 cheques. No, what we did was create a complete economic fiasco for ourselves.

Now we have some serious problems. We had Mr Chaney, the head of NAB, on Lateline about a week ago. He was very dire. Mr Chaney said something that I think I said a few years ago myself. And I congratulate him; he kept his job. Mr Chaney said that in a few years time, if we go down this path, we will be like Ireland. Surely that jerks people back into gear. Surely, somewhere along the line, people start scratching their heads. David Murray, the former head of the Future Fund, said we are going out the back door. Surely somebody understands what this means, but instead we get Mr Swan. I would have to say that the feeling around this building, and over the last couple of days, is one of complete and utter anticlimax. There is just a hole where, once upon a time, competent people resided—because nobody can believe anything that the Green-Labor Party-Independent government says anymore. None of it matters. It is all pointless. It is all ridiculous. You can only be believed when you can stand behind your products and when you can bring your actuals in to meet your budgets. As a little old bush accountant I see that sophistry lives in budgets. Sophistry is the world of budget. The beauty of a budget is in the eye of the beholder. But if you want to put yourself up as the Cassandra, the clairvoyant or the Nostradamus in the budget, you have actually got to make your predictions come somewhere within the ballpark of what your actuals are. It has never happened. We have never got within a bull's roar of what was said was going to happen.

We have had other confusions in here, because the Labor Party gets egged on by the Greens. The Greens want to pay for the everything with a mining tax, but they do not believe in mining. They cannot ever nominate one mine that they believe in, but apparently that is how they are going to pay for everything.

How do we actually get ourselves out of this situation that the Green-Labor Party-Independent alliance has put us in? For how many years are we going to inflict this upon the Australian people? What happens with their heroic projections, even in current budgetary papers, and their terms of trade? Correct me if I am wrong, but our dollar has—for the first time—just slipped below parity. It has done that because the world is reading in a downturn in commodity prices. Where is that going to leave us in trying to finance a debt that was predominately raised from overseas? How much trouble have these people put us in? Where is the confidence that we can start moving the agenda back? Last time they left us with $105 billion gross debt and $96 billion net debt, just to show you how close the two figures ended up. When they left us debt of $105 billion gross and $96 billion net, it took the nation 10 years of a coalition government to pay it off. And there was a substantial asset in there as well: the sale of Telstra, which was $45 billion.

Now, in their own words, they talk about $370 billion as the market value of their peak debt. How do we pay that back? What are we going to sell this time? What is on the market this time? What can we possibly do? Where is the solution to this? Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one solution, and that solution is an election as quickly as possible and a change of government, and then an arduous period of time where we have to walk hand in glove with the Australian people. But we must explain to the Australian people that they were put in this situation by the Greens, the Labor Party and the Independents Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott.