Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to address two issues. One is the situation of Channel 31 in Melbourne and the other is the ongoing destruction being caused to our economy by the Rudd Labor government. Firstly, I would like to commend the very hard work done by the community television sector and congratulate them on securing from the government $2.9 million and part of the digital spectrum, Channel A. This funding will allow for community TV to make the switch from analog to digital transmission and secure its funding base. There are still questions on whether there is sufficient funding to cover all five capital cities but we welcome this move nonetheless.

I have spoken in this place before about the incredibly important role community television plays in the industry. Channel 31, the community television station in Melbourne, was kind enough to invite me to their station to look at the work they do. It is impressive that so much local content is able to be broadcast on such tight budgets. It is undoubtedly one of the Australia’s premier incubators of local television talent, both on and off screen. It is the birthplace of talent such as Rove, Hamish and Andy, Peter Helliar and Corinne Grant, amongst others. It has more local content than any other network and generates over 100 jobs that otherwise would not exist.

The staff provide a strong positive vibe that allows the station to bring together important and marginalised members of the community who can express themselves in positive and creative ways. It is also completely self-funding, unlike the ABC which has been dominating the digital TV space, and yet the local content and return on investment comparisons are very favourable for stations like Channel 31. While I am sure the community TV sector is happy to have received this funding, I cannot let Senator Conroy or the government off the hook.

It took far too long for the government to make this decision. And, for all the admiration that those in the arts and creative community show for the Labor Party, it has unfortunately turned its back on a section of the creative community that is making a real difference and providing some real benefits to the community. The coalition proposed the granting of spectrum and transitional funding months before the government acted, and in the meantime immensely important funding was lost due the drift to digital TV that has been occurring. The minister should know better.

There is another matter that I would like to raise. It is a matter that I and members of the coalition consider to be extremely serious. Australia’s economy now and into the future is being recklessly damaged by the mismanagement of Mr Rudd and the Labor Party. Under the previous, coalition government Australia enjoyed what most would consider to be a golden economic age, with low inflation; record low unemployment; record low interest rates; the elimination of net government debt; sustained economic growth; consistent budget surpluses, including a final surplus in our last year in office of more than two per cent of GDP; low levels of personal taxation; and investment in the Future Fund and the Higher Education Endowment Fund.

This was the result of careful and disciplined economic management over the course of a decade, starting with the very first budget the Howard government delivered. After 13 years of Labor neglect and mismanagement, Treasurer Peter Costello restored fiscal rigour to the budget, and made surpluses the norm instead of the exception. That is quite an achievement in itself given that prior to the Howard government there had only been a handful of budget surpluses since the Second World War.

The budget surpluses changed the culture and the community’s expectation of government’s role and abilities. Throughout that decade of government Australia weathered the Asian financial crisis, the United States recession of 2000, the economic disruption caused by September 11, 2001, and a number of oil price shocks. Tough but necessary decisions were needed and made to ensure Australia survived these challenges. And, unlike the current government, when the Howard government made tough decisions they really were tough decisions—certainly not concocted like the crisis apparently being built up by the present Prime Minister.

It seems that the Prime Minster today only accepts the so-called tough decisions when they are popular, otherwise it is his staff that make them and he distances himself from the announcements. I guess when you are off giving Cate Blanchett gifts, mangling the English language and spending all your time at international conference cocktail parties it gets tough to fit real governing into the program! No amount of spin or rewriting of history will change the indisputable fact that the Labor record since November 2007 has been one of failure and mismanagement.

This government lacks the discipline of the former government and lacks even the reformist credentials of the Hawke-Keating governments. This government has done nothing to restructure the economy for the 21st century. And this government’s one defining characteristic is recklessness. Some people say that the Prime Minister is being decisive when he makes these snap decisions. Sometimes that may be true, but on every major spending decision that this government has taken it has preferred to shoot from the hip rather than take a measured and responsible approach.

This government’s favourite, if inaccurate, saying is that the Liberal Party are climate change deniers. Well, Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, is an economics denier. He denies that his polices will cause inflation or interest rate rises, and yet they do. He claims his budgets will return to surplus, and yet they do not. He claims that he is an economic conservative. Kevin Rudd is about as economically conservative as Jefferson Davis was friendly to the slaves!

Let us look at the record. From a position of budget surplus equalling two per cent of GDP when he came into office, the Prime Minister has taken us to position of a deficit of five per cent of GDP—approximately a $60 billion turnaround in less than 12 months. Government debt has gone from being eliminated and having savings of $45 billion, to being $315 billion in the red. Unemployment is up, just like in the old days under Labor. Interest rates are up. Just lately, ours was the first industrialised economy to raise interests for two consecutive months, with probably a third rate rise in December.

It took the Howard government 10 years of disciplined economic management to eliminate Paul Keating’s $96 billion of debt. So Kevin Rudd, the present Prime Minister, is by some measures three times worse than Mr Keating—and I am sure some members of the listening public will shudder to think what that will mean in the future. No doubt, some older members of caucus would agree with that. So how long will it take to pay that off, especially considering that this government’s record on financial management is a joke? Mr Tanner, finance minister, likes to give long lectures about fiscal rectitude and convey the sense of moral superiority, but the entire government’s record makes a liar out of him. There is $5 billion in additional interest payments on government debt, even though projections are lower than originally forecast, and a $1.5 billion blow-out in the Building the Education Revolution school hall program. Let’s face it: it does get expensive when you knock down perfectly good classrooms to replace them with exactly the same number of classrooms even though the school does not want them! That is what I call command economics at it best!

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr knows all about that.

Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree, Senator Mason. There has been $500 million in solar panel cost blow-outs; $1.4 billion in Medicare and another $1.8 billion in pharmaceutical expense blow-outs, not to mention the GroceryWatch debacle, the 2020 summit, ridiculous levels of overseas travel, and of course, the big daddy of all cost blow-outs, the National Broadband Network. This was originally planned to be approximately $5 billion of government investment, give or take a little because the Prime Minister also likes to round up these massive sums. But the government decided on a whim, having botched the tender process, to fund a $43 billion infrastructure spend without any consideration, any rigour or even any back-of-the-envelope scribbling at all. Regardless of the merits of the policy of fibre-to-the-home, it is dangerous, reckless, and arrogant to commit so much taxpayers’ money without due diligence.

Telecommunications is a highly complex, quickly-evolving sector of the economy that is crucial to our future prosperity. If you are going to make a massive investment of taxpayers’ funds to drastically alter the landscape of the nation and the sector, there needs to be economic modelling, business plans, analysis of demand, analysis of future innovation and a raft of other investigations to, as best as possible, safeguard the public’s money. Sadly, this is all appears to be too much hard work. This government prefers to fly by the seat of its pants and claim that even if everyone is attacking a proposal then it must have achieved a compromise. It would be very good sense for them realise that sometimes when everyone attacks you it just means you are wrong.