Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Well, it didn't sound like a policy debate; it sounded like a personal attack. It sounded like a big sledge against the Greens. It sounded like the two of you falling out of love with one another. But, of course, we know it will only be temporary and that, no doubt, at some stage there will be some sort of secret deal, bargain et cetera.

The government is seeking to come in here and say this bill should be expedited. The chamber has apparently had enough time to debate something that it's barely debated at all. It has barely had the chance to debate this at all. What is this government doing with the management of its legislative program? Mishandling it terribly would be the answer to that because, before trying to mount the argument that it's time to push this through—that it's time to guillotine this—there should have been some debate of it before you actually got to that point.

This is a new $10 billion fund that the government has struggled to define or defend when it has come under scrutiny. It's meant to be an off-budget fund. That's the way they took it to the election campaign so they could, of course, go through that campaign and say: 'This isn't really money that we're spending. We don't have to account for this money; we're running it off budget.' But when challenged about investment mandates for the fund, in terms of how it will actually be accounted for, do the government make any of that public before this Senate is asked to vote on it? Of course they don't—none of that sort of detail or information is provided in advance. Then, in their desperation to try to negotiate this fund with the Greens or the rest of the crossbench, we learn they start to offer deals that say, 'Regardless of how much this fund earns, we might build this many houses,' or, 'Regardless of how much this fund earns, we might start to spend this much money as a guarantee year on year.' Well, guess what happens if you give those guarantees? It takes the measure on budget. It blows out of the water the entire premise of the policy that the government took to the last election. In their desperation, with an ill-conceived policy, they are now starting to unpick it and demonstrate just how bad Labor is when it comes to managing money. That's what all of this comes back to.

This off-budget fund, about which the government has said, 'We don't have to account for it as spending; we can claim a budget bottom line position without having to account for this,' will end up costing Australians. It will end up hitting the budget bottom line. It will end up deteriorating the government's budget position. It will end up operating completely contrary to what was promised at the election and the approach that they've taken. This is a bill that deserves scrutiny. This is a bill that deserves fair debate.