Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Because they would be embarrassing. It would be embarrassing, Senator Kroger, for me to spend my limited time talking about the Tasmanian election result. But I do want to go back to talk about the 7 September federal election result. Let us talk about that. What do we know? Labor recorded its lowest primary vote in 100 years. Labor in my home state of Western Australia received just 28.7 per cent of the vote, and across our country they won just seven seats on primary votes.

So what is the lesson? What is the exercise that federal Labor should be engaging in? It is one of establishing relevance again with the electorate. When we come to the National Commission of Audit there is no more important piece of work that this government is doing at the moment than the National Commission of Audit because, as people know, our spending is increasing at a much faster rate than we are raising revenue. People like me think that we should decrease the tax burden on taxpayers and decrease the size of government, and I do not believe for one moment that that necessarily means that the sorts of services government provides to people need to be compromised; nor do I believe it needs to have a dampening effect on economic growth.

So the National Commission of Audit is a very important piece of work for this government. It is one on which Labor senators today should heed the advice of your former Labor leaders—our former Prime Ministers, no less—Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and you should embrace the work of the National Commission of Audit and the work it will do to improve our budget position. (Time expired)