Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of senator Gallagher, I move general business notice of motion No. 512:

That the Senate notes that—

(a) after six years in office, the economy is floundering on the Government’s watch;

(b) Australians are struggling with stagnant wages, with wage growth stalling further;

(c) net debt has more than doubled under this Government;

(d) the Government does not have a plan to boost wages or growth in the economy; and

(e) it is because of the Government’s failures that Australia meets the challenges and uncertainties of the bushfires and coronavirus from a position of weakness, not strength.

There are so many people on the Labor side who would absolutely love to discuss this matter. So, even though there is considerable time, please take my short contribution only as a generosity to my colleagues, who have great things to say. There is so much wrong with this government. The gap between what the government say themselves about how good they are at managing the economy and what they're actually doing is like in a relationship where somebody promises that they're going to be a particular way and, bit by bit, you find out that they are not what they said they would be. That's exactly the case with this government.

The content of the notice of motion that we're discussing today is to note these critical things: that after six years—and it is now seven years—in office, the economy is actually floundering on this government's watch. In absolute contrast to what it is that they put out there and claim day after day, week after week, year after year, like drips on a stone. People have had this oil poured into their ears and they've been inclined to believe it for a little while, but the truth is coming out. It's coming out that this economy is in great trouble because they are not the economic managers that they claim to be.

We know that Australians are struggling with stagnant wages, with wage growth stalling further. That is the reality that's happening under this government. We know that net debt has more than doubled under this government and that the government doesn't have a plan to boost wages or grow the economy. It is because of this government's succession of failures that Australia meets the challenges and uncertainties of the bushfire summer that has just passed and the coronavirus from a position of economic weakness, not strength. That is what we are here to talk about this afternoon.

In the language around debt that this government has inflicted on the nation over the years, they claim they are great economic managers. I decided that I would do what Australians do for their sources of information, because I can tell you that you cannot trust the Prime Minister. He is very loose with the truth. You cannot trust Mr Frydenberg, for example, who declared outright last year in his budget speech that we were 'back in black'. Not that we were going to be, but that Australia 'back in black' and 'back on track'. He was so confident in that, and so were the Liberal Party, in their masquerade, in their deception to the Australian people, that they decided they'd cash in by actually creating a product to improve their chances of fundraising for the election. They actually came up with this little official 'back in black' mug. It was a limited edition. They said:

The 2019 Budget delivers the first surplus in more than a decade. Mark this event with the official Back in Black mug.

The problem is that it's just not true. What they really should have put out was 'still in the red', because that was the reality at the time that this government was declaring to Australians, in April last year, that the accounts were back in black.

This government has seen debt spiral. If we go back to 2011, this government was sitting with $191 billion of gross debt. You don't need to take my word for it. Just go to Wikipedia. It's not hard to find; it's the first search result that comes up. It has a table—