Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

tor BRAGG () (): I think it's good that from time to time we see senators give unscripted addresses like we just saw from Senator Ciccone. I think it's far better than the dreadful, turgid reading out of other people's points that puts most of us to sleep! So I think it was good to hear that. But the point I want to make today in this address is really more in relation to the budget management, which was, of course, the subject of the last few questions from the opposition.

Of course, the overall problem here is that the government has not been able to adopt a contractionary budget stance and has decided that it would effectively fuel inflation by being incapable of restraining new spending. The key stat from the budget just delivered was the $14 billion in additional spending based on decisions made in that budget process for this financial year about to start—$14 billion of new spending in that budget process. Since that budget, which is only a few weeks ago, we've now seen another couple of billion dollars spent. That is the central problem that is facing the country's economic management, because we have an executive government deciding that it cannot slow new spending. In fact, it is committing new spending on a regular and, frankly, unusual basis. To spend $2 billion when a budget has just been freshly inked is unusual.

Then, of course, you have the Reserve Bank, which is trying to soften things out there in the economy with its blunt tool of monetary policy, and you see fiscal and monetary policy working against one another. It is very frustrating that we see the procession of Labor backbenchers being sent out to attack Philip Lowe for doing his job. Philip Lowe might not be the most popular person in Australia, but at least he's doing his job by raising interest rates to try and deal with inflation whilst Canberra continues to spend more and more money. So that is the central problem in the budget and in the overall position the country faces.

The second issue, though, is the lack of productivity reforms in the budget. When we had the Senate estimates recently, we had the Productivity Commission come and give evidence, and the main question that the chair of the PC was asked was, 'How many of the measures in your recent report are actually in the budget?' The answer was none, because, of course, the Productivity Commission's advice is that the country should be moving to liberalise and improve the level of flexibility in labour laws, whereas the government's agenda has been to try and ensure that the labour laws are more complex and more convoluted.

Of course, this goes to the third major issue here, which is the central driver of this government, which is to enrich its favourite vested interests. If you are a union, a super fund or a class-action law firm, your issues will be at the top of the list here in Canberra. Of course, that also goes to the spending of money, which again goes back to that first point about the very difficult issue we face: inflation. So that is the central problem: inflation being fuelled by Canberra, no productivity, and then, on top of that, a government which is obsessed with trying to enrich its favourite vested interests. I think, unfortunately, until we see the government adopt a productivity agenda and start to say no to new spending proposals, we're going to see higher inflation then we should see, and we're going to see a weakening economy with weakening competitiveness.

So those are the central questions that we've been asking in question time today. Again, I want to reiterate my thanks to Senator Ciccone for being able to go off script. I think that's very helpful, and I hope that in future we can see more contributions which are unscripted. I do not want to make any commentary about the content, but I want to very much associate myself with the manner in which the senator gave his contribution.