Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I was upstairs in my office having a cup of Earl Grey tea and listening, as of course I always do, to Senator Cameron's contribution on Senator Carr's motion about Australian jobs. Senator Cameron's contributions are feisty, sometimes eloquent but always interesting. He said that when Senator Mason came to the chamber he would blacken the name of the unions, the workers and the car manufacturers. I just want to assure the Senate that that is not my aim, but I do not have any problem with blackening the name of the Australian Labor Party. That is a very different issue.

The opposition's solution to problems in the manufacturing industry, particularly the car industry, was their traditional solution to every problem. Which is? To throw money at it. It does not matter if it is health, education or welfare—the Australian Labor Party, like so many social democratic parties in the West, believes that you solve economic and social problems by throwing money at them. They threw money at the car manufacturers. Did it work? No, it did not. Did they nevertheless keep throwing money at the car industry? Yes, they did.

In 2012 Ms Gillard announced $34 million for Ford, saying that it would create 300 new jobs. That was just a couple of years ago. What happened then? Ford got their money but instead of 300 new jobs 330 employees actually lost their jobs within eight months. Also in 2012 Ms Gillard announced $215 million for General Motors Holden, saying it would secure Holden's future in Australia until 2022—for the next 10 years. What happened next? Holden got their money but within months 670 jobs were lost. All up, from 1 January 2011 through until 31 December 2013 the Labor government provided a total of $660 million in funding assistance to the three major motor vehicle producers. The question the Australian people have to ask, that this parliament has to ask and that this Senate in particular has to ask is: was that money well spent? Clearly, it was not. The Labor Party does not worry about that. It is only $660 million. That is spare change! When you are running budget deficits in tens of billions of dollars and government debts in hundreds of billions, who cares about $660 million? Labor certainly doesn't. This puts us into more and more debt that the next generation will have to pay off. Labor does not care about that.

More than a couple of times in this place I have discussed Labor's history of debt. The hole in Labor's vision for our future, for the future of our country and our children, is the same hole that swallowed governments in Western Europe and North America. That is the idea that debt really is okay. Labor would argue, 'That is infrastructure.' That is true. Of course, money can be borrowed to develop infrastructure that can assist the next generation. But there is a problem. Labor's debt was not created because of infrastructure; it was created on the back of recurrent expenditure. That was the problem—just like Western Europe and North America: the same bloody hole that those democratic nations fell into. That is exactly what started to happen in the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments. There is a history. This is not new. This is Labor's history. It has been since 1904 with John Christian Watson. From Chris Watson all the way through to Mr Kevin Rudd, the last Labor Prime Minister: every time Labor leave government in this country they leave Australia further in debt. There has not been one exception since 1904. Every time Labor leaves office, Australia is further in debt.

This is an economic issue, of course it is, because government borrowing can distort economies. It can distort the private sector and it means that the interest bill has to be catered for. That is true. There are economic issues, but there is a greater issue. The Labor Party and too many governments—some, I concede, Conservative and Christian Democratic governments in Western Europe—have made this mistake. There is a moral issue as well. The Labor Party has never had any problem in passing down debt to the next generation—our children and, indeed, our grandchildren. If it were all for bridges and roads, you could perhaps justify it, but it is not; it is recurrent expenditure. The coalition believes that generations should live within their means—more or less, subject to infrastructure costs. If you want to spend more on health, education and welfare, you know what you have to do: you have to tax more. One thing the greatest Treasurer in Australia's history—