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

The government really has two main issues: (1) it has not credibly taken on the inflation challenge; and (2) it has failed on productivity. On the issue du jour here, inflation: obviously, petrol prices and the like are impacted by global markets. We all know that. When the ABS and the government's advisers—the 'official family', as it were—look at all these things, they take out volatile factors, like the oil prices. But the problem for the government and the problem for the Australian people is that inflation has not been appropriately addressed, at least in a competitive sense. We are running a higher profile of inflation in this country than many other OECD and G20 nations, and that's because Canberra has got its foot on the accelerator in relation to the fiscal side of things. In this last budget, we've seen new decisions taken amounting to $50 billion in new expenditure. That comes on top of last year's budget, where you saw an even greater number. The reason that we have this persistent inflation is that Canberra can't stop spending.

Mr Chalmers can't say no to his favourite vested interests when it comes to putting money in their pockets. Of course, the whole business model of this government is to line the coffers of their fellow travellers—the people that preselect their senators and members; the people that fund their campaigns; the people that turn up for them on election day: the unions and the big super funds. This whole government's economic agenda is skewed towards lining the pockets of the unions and the super funds. So, whether it is policy on pattern bargaining—so that everyone is to be paid the same amount of money, no matter what their circumstances, effectively ending the idea and the concept of enterprise bargaining, which was introduced by Paul Keating, decades ago—or whether it is the removal of labour hire, which gives small business the flexibility it needs to meet changes in the economy, the whole of the government's economic program is geared towards these narrow vested interests. When you spend all your time thinking about these narrow vested interests, you have no time to work on the major economic challenges facing the nation.

So, when you look at what the government is putting on the books here in Canberra, for us to talk about when we come down to the bush capital, it's all about working through the laundry list of the bloodsuckers and the rent-seekers and trying to enact all the things that they are looking for in relation to their union and superannuation agendas. That is the major problem, I think, that the government has at its core.

That, of course, applies to the other issue, productivity. You can't improve productivity when you're running a government which is designed to slow productivity. The very nature of the laundry list of the issues from the unions, which is all about inserting themselves as the perennial and perpetual middle man, is to slow down productivity, to put sand into the gears so you can clip the ticket and collect a portion of the enterprise's business, because you are by law required to be there in some form, even if you're not needed. That is a fundamental problem that the government and now the Australian people have. It is a government for vested interests, working only for a narrow few, not for all of us.

So the test in the year to come, as we move into the second part of this term, will be, what are the policies that the government is going to put on the table to improve investment, to improve productivity? How much longer do the Productivity Commission's reports have to gather dust for? How many more months? The Productivity Commission says 'You should improve productivity because that will improve the lives of the Australian people.' The Labor government says 'No, that doesn't suit the unions and the super funds and the other bloodsuckers and the other rent seekers that have sent us here to Canberra.' That is the fundamental problem we have here. The test is, what can the Labor Party do, now they are the government—the dog that caught the car—to improve investment, jobs and productivity in this country?