Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The really lucky thing for Jeff Kennett, who is 'never, ever, ever, ever going to the vote for Malcolm Turnbull', is that unless he moves into the seat of Wentworth he is never going to have to.

It seems somewhat ironic that the matter of public importance that has been put on the Notice Paper by the Labor Party today is in relation to economic management. There is a certain irony in us being lectured by the Labor Party about economic leadership. I listened to Senator Bullock's contribution with great interest. I have a lot of respect for Senator Bullock's opinions and views on many things, and much of what he said I thought probably made an awful lot of sense. The only problem was that when his side were in government I do not think they delivered many of the things that Senator Bullock has just aspired for the Labor Party; they do not hold true. So while it was a fabulous ideological speech, I am not necessarily sure there was any substance in the delivery of it whatsoever. To be lectured by the Labor Party, a party that promised surplus after surplus after surplus after surplus and recorded nothing but deficit after deficit after debt after debt after deficit, does strike me as being rather extraordinary. It seems that the minute the coalition were elected to parliament and the Labor Party were removed to the opposition benches, they immediately forgot everything that they had done and have spent this whole time criticising us for things that we have done, even though much of the activity in the economic space during their watch had been nothing short of complete and utter abject disaster.

Many of the behaviours and actions of those opposite, following the election of the coalition government, were somewhat more mischievous than just sitting there throwing bricks at us. They actually stood in the way of approximately $5 billion worth of their own budget savings, savings that they had already put on the record prior to the election that they were intending to implement in order to deal with the issues of the debt and deficit, problems that I think the entire Australian public would be in no doubt whatsoever about—that is, that we have a problem with debt and deficit. To then come into this place and deny the incoming coalition government the opportunity to realise the savings that they had already put on the public record prior to the election was quite extraordinary.

Another thing I found extraordinary is the situation we have at the moment with ChAFTA. There is absolutely no doubt, as I said this morning and as I have probably said a thousand times since I arrived in this place, that Australia is an exporting nation. We are never going to get rich selling to ourselves, because we do not have the population or the capacity to sustain a population that will allow us to continue to sell to ourselves. So the most important thing that we can do in an economic management sense is to make sure that we develop our export markets so that Australian businesses can prosper in their manufacturing, in their production, and can sell overseas, because unless businesses in Australia are prosperous, there will be no jobs.

I acknowledge that the most important thing that we can do in Australia is to make sure that every Australian has a job. Most particularly it would be nice to think that every Australian could have a job that they liked, a job that was going to give them the economic prosperity, the lifestyle and the standard of living that all of us aspire to have. That is the bottom line, but we cannot deliver that unless we give the prosperity and the economic ability for growth and prosperity to businesses. To be standing in the way of the China free trade agreement, our largest trading partner in the world, is an absolute disgrace. To then come into this place today and criticise us about economic leadership—the economic leadership shown by those opposite was some of the worst that this country has ever seen. I probably would not trust the Labor Party to run a chook raffle when it came to economic management.

The track record of this government has been very good. There is certainly no doubt, and I do not think anybody in this place, no matter who they are, would not agree that we can always do better in the economic space, but what I would ask those opposite is to please allow us the opportunity to do better in this economic space. Allow us to implement the policies that we went to the Australian public with in 2013. Allow us to be able to give businesses incentives so that they can create the jobs and so that those jobs can go to the people who we all agree are the reason we actually govern this country. The coalition government has got a good track record. I agree we could have a better track record. I can say, for one, that I am very keen to work with this government to make sure that we increase the economic prosperity of this country.