Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

What can you say when you're following Senator Bernardi and Senator Macdonald? I see Senator Macdonald leaving the chamber. No wonder the electorate up in North Queensland dumped Senator Macdonald—after that diatribe and load of nonsense that he's just gone through. I think what Senator Bernardi has outlined here is the division amongst conservative forces in this country. This is simply a stunt from Senator Bernardi. This is about Senator Bernardi trying to promote the Australian Conservatives over the coalition government. Senator Bernardi nods. Well, you know; that's right. This is simply a stunt. It's about creating more division and more problems for this coalition government.

Senator Bernardi, this government doesn't need any help from you to get itself into trouble. This government doesn't need any help from you to demonstrate that it's divided and is an absolute rabble of a government. But you've done that. I can understand why you're doing that. But this is a stunt. The irony is that you, Senator Bernardi, supported putting a cap on debt in the first place. And this is debt that, for the first time in Australia's history, has crashed through the half-a-trillion-dollar mark.

This is a government who self-proclaim that they are great economic managers, but they are always amongst the worst economic managers that ever came to place in this country. Debt is going to stay above half a trillion dollars all the way across the medium term in this country. The debt has gone through the roof under the coalition's watch, under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The debt has gone through the roof. We don't see any mention of the budget deficit now from the government, do we? When they were in opposition all they wanted to do was talk about budget deficits. Over the last financial year the budget deficit has become six times larger than the government predicted in their first infamous 2014 budget. And we all remember the 2014 budget, don't we? It was the budget where they tried to increase the problems for pensioners in this country. They tried to force young people in this country to survive for six months without any support. The 2014 budget cut expenditure on education, cut expenditure on health and cut expenditure on housing and homelessness. It was a disaster of a budget. That's how this government came to power, with an austerity budget.

We hear them warbling on about their great economic management. Well, let's look at their economic management over this period of time. Firstly, there was the austerity budget. That was the first position that they took—the one that I've just outlined. Everybody remembers that first Abbott budget. The current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said he supported every aspect of the budget. He said to an interviewer, 'You ask me about any aspect of that budget and I'll support it.' That's the hypocrisy of Prime Minister Turnbull. And yet, when he knifed Prime Minister Abbott in the back, he said that his great economic position would be to increase the GST, the goods and services tax. That's what came from Malcolm Turnbull: he would increase the GST, which would impact more on families than the Prime Minister's rich mates at Point Piper. He would hammer ordinary Australian workers by increasing the GST. That lasted about a week, and then the Prime Minister was forced to pull that off because no-one was going to support it. That was his first attempt to change economic direction and it didn't last longer than a week. His next great economic position was to hand taxing powers to the states. He was going to move the government out of taxing and hand taxing powers to the states. That might have lasted about two days and then he had to ignominiously retreat from that position.

Where are we now with this government? Senator Macdonald says they're such great economic managers. What's the latest position? Handing $80 billion to big business and $17 billion to the banks, with the hope that trickle-down economics will mean that working people in this country get a pay increase. What a load of nonsense. I just cannot stomach those senators across on the other side when they get up and talk about economic management when they have been such failures over so many years in economic management. They have been absolutely hopeless. The budget deficit is six times larger than when they came to government—double the amount the government first predicted. Debt and deficit levels have got to where they are under this government, and, until only recently, Senator Bernardi was a member of this government. Let's not forget what happened in December 2013. The government did a deal with the Greens—those champions of fiscal responsibility—to abolish the previous cap on debt. And who voted to support this deal with the Greens? None other than Senator Bernardi. So we won't be taking any lectures from him or from Senator Macdonald on fiscal rectitude, just like the arbitrary tax cap that this government has seen fit to put into policy. What will this actually achieve?

Let's be clear. Unlike the government, which has its big-business tax cuts and big-income tax cuts that largely benefit high-income earners out in the never-never, Labor has a proper plan to get the budget back to a sustainable footing. Through our plans to reform negative gearing and capital gains tax, reform discretionary trusts, cap deductions on managing tax affairs, deal with multinational tax reform and reform dividend imputation, we are able to fund essential services that ordinary families in this country need so badly. We will fund decent education funding and decent health funding. We're the ones that'll do that. We're the ones that are looking after housing and homelessness. We're the ones that are saying we will invest in TAFE to give working-class kids in this country an opportunity to get an education and get a job. It's Labor that are the people that are taking the hard decisions, and doing the hard yards on economic decisions in this country—not the nonsense we heard from Senator Macdonald. Is it any wonder that Senator Macdonald's own people in Queensland wouldn't support him for another term in this parliament? He got dumped. And we just saw the reason he got dumped—his nonsense, his simply parroting the rubbish that he parrots every time he's in here.

Labor has been accused here of being bad economic managers. Let me tell you: go back to what the International Monetary Fund said only a few years ago. This is not some left-wing mob out there supporting the Labor Party; this is the International Monetary Fund. It identified only two periods of what it described as 'fiscal profligacy'—that means spending badly and not looking after the money and the tax that comes in. Guess when those two periods of fiscal profligacy were? They were under former Prime Minister John Howard. This is from the International Monetary Fund. Senator Bernardi was part of that government and Senator Macdonald was part of that government.

So when the IMF said there were two times in recent years when there had been problems with government spending, they were under John Howard and, also, the worst Treasurer we've ever had—the weakest Treasurer we've ever had—Peter Costello. They were under Howard and Costello. They were the ones that were pushing the bad economic decisions. The first one was in 2003, at the start of the mining boom, when John Howard splashed money about as if there was no tomorrow. And then, in the final years in office, between 2005 and 2007, former Prime Minister John Howard—along with former Treasurer Peter Costello—in an absolute panic to try and hold on to government, splashed money around as if there was no tomorrow. The IMF saw this, and the IMF said that those were the two eras when there was absolute fiscal incompetence in this country. It was when Senator Bernardi was part of the Howard government and when Senator Macdonald was part of the Howard government. That's when the nonsense went on in this country. That's when we didn't invest for the future. That's when we didn't put in for proper education and health funding—under the Howard-Costello government, in which Senator Macdonald and Senator Bernardi were players. Senator Macdonald was a minister in that government.

The economists from the IMF's fiscal affairs department found the only other year of profligate spending during the past six decades took place during the conservative government of Robert Menzies. If you want to look at fiscal profligacy, if you want to look at governments that can't look after the community, if you want to look at governments that just throw the money around, look at John Howard and Robert Menzies. They're the ones that have done all the damage to the economy. It was John Howard and Peter Costello who locked in the deficit for this country for years to come because they had no idea what was good for the country. They had no idea how to handle public funds. All they wanted to do was save their own necks. And I can tell you, Senator Bernardi, you know what's going to happen; the public do not want these tax cuts to big business and, if anyone were listening, they would back off. But we'll get Senator Cormann saying these tax cuts to big business will continue regardless of the effects they might have on the economy.

We certainly know one effect it won't have: it won't increase the wages of working-class Australians in this country. We know that trickle-down economics doesn't work. We know that the Prime Minister and Senator Cormann want to continue to try to get these cuts for their big-business mates. But we know that that won't go through the Senate. We're pretty confident that that won't go through the Senate. So I'll tell you what's going to happen after it doesn't go through the Senate. All this argument about fiscal prudence and looking after public money will disappear when the Prime Minister and Senator Cormann set about handing out handouts to every pressure group in the country. We know that's what's going to happen. They're going to do exactly the same that John Howard did when he was trying to stay in office. They will throw the cash around, and let's hear what Senator Bernardi says about that when that starts to happen.

The Turnbull government in panic will throw the cash around and try to buy their way back into office, but I think the Australian public are well aware that this government has absolutely no capacity to look after working families in this country. The only people they want to look after are themselves, and this Prime Minister is a prime example of that. He will say anything and he will do anything to try to maintain his position of power and privilege as the Prime Minister of this country. If only he could use the power and privilege of prime ministership in this country to benefit working families. But he can't do that, because he is under control. He is controlled by the worst elements of the National Party and the worst elements of the Liberal Party. His new favourite, Senator Pauline Hanson, controls the economic future of this government.

What an absolute disgrace. What a position we find ourselves in, with one of the weakest prime ministers this country has ever seen, with a Treasurer—Scott Morrison—who doesn't know what he's going to do next, with no plan B other than splashing money around as they did in the past to try to buy themselves back into power. That's exactly the position you will find with this government. There's no argument about that. We know what's being geared up for and we know that's what's going to happen.

This is a government with no economic credibility. It's got no social credibility either. It's got no credibility when it comes to looking after working people that are doing it tough, workers facing wage stagnation, workers battling to pay their bills. Look at what's happening in terms of climate change policy in this country. What an absolute nonsense it has been from this government. They're the ones that have stopped any certainty taking place in this country for investment. For as long as this coalition government have been in government, there has never been investment certainty. With all the right-wing nut jobs sitting on the other side of this parliament coming after—