Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not sure if we have just seen Bob the senator or Bob the historian or Bob the blogger but I do congratulate my new colleague on his first speech. I note with some interest the content of Senator Bob Carr's speech in relation to the environment and I have a question for him: as premier, would he have gone to the people of New South Wales two days before an election and told them a complete untruth on what he was going to do about such an important policy as a carbon tax?

Because I remind Senator Bob Carr that two days before the last election the person who prevailed upon him to come into this place was indeed the very person who told the great lie of Australian politics in the last century, and that was: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I ask Senator Bob Carr: would he have gone to the New South Wales people and told a complete untruth? That is what I would like to hear from Senator Carr when he makes his next speech.

I would like to refer Senator Bob Carr to an article in the Australian in February of this year written by Graham Lloyd, the environment editor. I will just read it because, with the greatest respect to the new senator, I did not think his Chicken Little approach to what lies ahead was a constructive debate in relation to where we will be in the next 10, 20 or 50 years. Graham Lloyd, the environment editor, said:

Himalayan glaciers are back on the frontline of climate change controversy, with new research showing the world's greatest snowcapped peaks lost no ice at all over the past 10 years.

Claims the Himalayan ice peaks would disappear by 2035 instead of 2350 cast doubt over the credibility of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2009 report. Now even the 2350 estimate of disappearing ice is open to question.

Research published in the scientific journal Nature showed satellite measurements of the ice peaks from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan have come to an unexpected conclusion.

While lower-altitude glaciers were melting over the past eight years, enough snow was being added …

…   …   …

In 2010, the head of the IPCC was forced to apologise for including in a 2007 report the claim that there was a 'very high' chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded in January 2010 that 'the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly' when the claim was included.

I do want to talk about some other matters. One is that in 2012 we mark the 70th anniversary of a number of matters that were an indication of the darkest of days in 1942 and the challenges facing this nation. Without an exhaustive list, of course I note the fall of Singapore; the bombing of Darwin—and Natasha Griggs from the other place, the member for Solomon, is responsible for a motion, accepted by both chambers in the end, that we recognise the bombing of Darwin, and full marks to her; the battles of Sunda Strait and Bantam Bay and the sinking of HMAS Perth; the bombing of Broome and Wyndham; HMAS Yarra, sunk off Java; the battle of Java itself; the battle of the Coral Sea; attacks on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines; the Queen unveiling Bomber Command Memorial in London this year on 28 June; the sinking of the Montevideo Maru; the battle of the Kokoda Track in New Guinea; the battle of Milne Bay in New Guinea; the battle of El Alamein in Egypt; and of course there are others. This is a moment and a year of solemn reflection for this country.

I want to talk about another matter that relates to a function I attended with the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Tony Abbott, in Bendigo on 5 March. There the Leader of the Opposition in writing again pledged the coalition to address the DFRDB and the DFRB indexation matter. Again, the Leader of the Opposition has set in stone the commitment of the coalition to address the wrongs that should have been righted many years ago—and I acknowledge it should have been righted by the former government. But I am not here to debate what happened before; I am here to debate and talk about what we need to do now. This chamber should be ashamed that on 16 June last year when the opportunity was there to address this issue of the fair indexation of this superannuation, which we all know is a wrong that should be righted, the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and Senator Xenophon voted it down.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame!

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A unique opportunity—and, as Senator Edwards said, a shame. It was indeed a disgrace. We will index the military superannuation pensions the way they should be. Can anyone in this chamber tell me—I know from our side that they can, they will have the answer; but can anyone from the Australian Labor Party or the Greens tell me how it is appropriate to index age pensions and service pensions differently for these men and women? It is outrageous, it is unfair and it is inequitable, and this chamber had the opportunity to address it in June last year and it did not do so. That is to the eternal shame of this chamber. It is to the eternal shame of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens, and they stand utterly condemned for not addressing fair indexation when presented with the opportunity to do so.

Don't forget, this was about fair go. This was the opportunity to give 57,000 Australian families a fair go, and a fair go was not given. I know there are many, many Labor members who quite rightly have been inundated with emails and other correspondence from veterans, not just from those on the DFRDB and the DFRB but from many veterans who are absolutely incensed about what has happened.

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Completely let down.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Completely and utterly let down, as Senator Edwards said. But the coalition will not let these men and women down, and that pledge is absolutely now written in stone. Another matter of enormous concern is the decision of the government last year to slash $8 million from veterans advocacy funding and the Veteran and Community Grants program. Just to put this into perspective, the state where this will have the biggest impact is Victoria. When the government released its advocacy review there was money set aside, quite rightly, to enable work to be done to include in New South Wales and Queensland the sorts of veterans welfare centres that Victoria had. But, remarkably, it has now removed that money. A reduction in funding was not mentioned or addressed at all by the advocacy funding review. In fact, if you read the review properly there is probably a very good reason to increase funding. So the very welfare centre model that the government was putting money into to spread the centres has been utterly decimated by the government's decision to remove $8 million.

There is a very real chance that the Ballarat Veterans Support Centre will close. The Central Victorian Veterans Support Centre in Bendigo is under enormous strain. The administrator has taken a pay cut so the centre can remain open. It is the same in Geelong. It is the same in the Blue Mountains. Everywhere I go I am confronted with veterans advocates and pensioner welfare officers telling me they wonder why they are doing this work when the government itself refuses to acknowledge the work that they are doing. These are volunteers volunteering their services for the veteran community—some are veterans, a number are not. They believe this role is so important that they volunteer their services. And the government, in that budget decision last year, absolutely ripped the heart and soul of these centres and ripped out of those volunteers to some extent the commitment that they previously had. They themselves are saying, 'If that is the way the government treats us, why should we continue doing this?' I am confident they will because I know the cause is bigger than the incompetence of this government.

Turning to the BEST funding, young veterans and their families are the ones who potentially will lose the most out of these centres not providing potentially the level of service that they were. Those young men and women are the ones who, if they have got nowhere to go, are more likely to walk away from accessing their entitlements—legitimate entitlements given by the people of this country in recognition of the uniqueness of the military service they have been engaged in. The uniqueness of military service must underpin every decision we as a nation make and underpin every decision that comes from both here and the other place. The uniqueness of military service has not been recognised with the slashing of the BEST funding.

The veterans, quite rightly, are utterly incensed that they must pay for the incompetence of this government. It is not just the DFRDB recipients. It is TPI pensioners and the widows who cannot access the gold card. I can go on and on. I will tell you why these veteran issues cannot be addressed. I will go through some of the reasons. The Home Insulation Program: $2.4 billion was wasted and mismanaged. The Building the Education Revolution: a $1.7 billion blow-out on school halls with a program costing $16.2 billion and estimates of up to $8 billion wasted. The Computers in Schools program: blown out by $1.2 billion, with one million computers promised but only 300,000 delivered. The Broadband Network: promised for $4.7 billion but replaced with a $43 billion plan. There was FuelWatch and GroceryWatch. There was the solar home program: a $150 million blow-out with the program cancelled. Green Loans program: $300 million wasted, with the program cancelled. And, to rub salt into the wounds of those people who served this country, there has been nearly $1 billion spent on consultants by this government since they came to office in 2007. Government advertising is another one: the stimulus advertising, $50 million wasted; climate change advertising, $14 million wasted. There was $81.9 million to implement the ETS that never was. For the 2020 Summit: $2 million wasted. The tax bonus payments: $46 million wasted, with money sent to people overseas, criminals and dead people. It is about time we got our priorities right.

I will raise another matter. The cost of servicing the 'loan' that this government has imposed on the people of this country—every man, woman and child—is an interest bill of $8 billion. Given the appropriate amount of time, I could go through, chapter and verse, every single dollar that could have been spent from that $8 billion on the veterans of this country. That $8 billion would pay for the bulk of the issues that the veteran community, quite rightly, is angry about. If there was some good to have come out of this waste and mismanagement, there might have been an excuse for it. But how can any government turn around a country with budget surpluses and no debt into something now approaching about $130 billion to $140 billion of net debt and borrowing $100 million a day? I thank Senator Edwards and Senator Cash for assisted me with this figure: we are borrowing $100 million a day. It is absolutely outrageous. In the four minutes left I want to raise several other matters. I pay tribute to the outgoing Chairman of the Council of the Australian War Memorial, General Peter Cosgrove. General Cosgrove steered the Australian War Memorial through difficult times. I do not want to politicise these comments, but I will say the government was dragged kicking and screaming into providing the War Memorial with desperately needed funds. On behalf of the coalition and, I am sure, on behalf of this chamber and the Australian people, I thank General Peter Cosgrove most sincerely for his contribution. I do, on behalf of all those aforementioned, welcome Rear Admiral Ken Doolan AO RAN (Ret'd) as Chairman of the Council of the Australian War Memorial. Admiral Doolan joins a distinguished list of Australians who have served as chairmen of the Australian War Memorial's council. I have every confidence that Admiral Doolan will forthrightly represent the Memorial's views to the government and ensure that projects like the gallery's redevelopment are properly funded and delivered on time.

I turn to some remarkable comments by Councillor Cameron Granger, the Deputy Mayor of Geelong, who, of course, is a member of the ALP right and is in the faction of Richard Marles, the member for Corio. The Geelong Advertiser reports today that Councillor Granger at a Geelong business network breakfast had the gall to attack the Premier of Victoria over Alcoa. He made the quite remarkable comment: 'Mr Premier, we can't wait. Devise a plan to assist and get on a plane to New York.' Well, I have got some advice for Councillor Granger: why doesn't Councillor Granger, the Labor Party lackey Deputy Mayor of the City of Geelong, get on a plane and fly to Canberra and tell the Prime Minister of this country and the right wing of the Labor Party that he does not want a carbon tax, because the carbon tax is the one imposition that will destroy manufacturing jobs in Geelong. So if Councillor Granger gets on the plane and comes here, then let us see what outcome he will get and whether he can address this outrageous attack on Geelong manufacturing and other jobs, and this outrageous attack on Geelong families. When Councillor Granger says we cannot wait, I say to Councillor Granger: I can't and we can't wait for you to start doing your job properly and stop playing cheap partisan politics when the City of Geelong and the region of Geelong is under such enormous threat.

I will finish on this. The coalition has given the government our absolute commitment to bipartisan support for the Centenary of Anzac. It will be an extraordinarily important period in this nation's history. We have the opportunity over the term of that commemoration to provide our children and leave them with a legacy that should be modelled upon the legacy left by a former Labor veterans' affairs minister, Con Sciacca, who in my view left a remarkable legacy to this country with the Australia Remembers program. What we must do is generate in the hearts and minds of our young people ownership of those things that we hold dear. It is our children, and not the current World War II and other older veterans, who oddly have the responsibility to ensure that this country never ever forgets.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012. This is a government that, when it comes to spending taxpayers' money and when it comes to robbing the mums and dads of Australia blind, has absolutely no shame whatsoever. Time and time again when faced with a situation where there is no money left in the pot, what does it do? Does it do what an economic conservative would do, which is sit back and take stock of why there is no money in the pot? The answer to that when it comes to the Labor Party is no. The Labor Party has no shame at all. It merely comes into this place with another bill requesting a few more hundred million dollars from the Australian taxpayer and says to the parliament, 'We have run out of money, and we need a bit more.'

Why do I say that? That we are currently debating appropriation bills in the Senate is proof of the fact that this government, consistent with so many Labor governments that have gone before it, when it comes to managing the Australian economy is absolutely reckless. It is not just the coalition saying that. Let's look at the figures. When the Rudd government came to power in November 2007 a great gift was bequeathed to it, and that was the legacy of the former Howard and Costello government to the tune of $22 billion with zero debt. Let's look at the situation four years on. We have had the execution of Mr Rudd, who now has so many 'formers' before his name it is embarrassing. Let's look at the situation now under the current Labor government. Under Labor, Australians are now bearing the brunt of the four biggest budget deficits in our history—not four budget deficits, but the four biggest budget deficits in Australia's history. Under those who are currently in government, Australia is borrowing $100 million each and every day of the year, and that is merely in interest alone. That's right, the Labor government is currently borrowing $100 million a day. The figure is so big you can hardly get your mind around it. If you equate that back to the average household budget, it would be like the mums and dads of Australia borrowing $1,000 every day to prop up their reckless spending. But the mums and dads of Australia cannot do that because they have to stick to very strict budgets. Unlike the Labor, they do not have the capacity to come back into this place and say, 'We are economically reckless. We have wasted taxpayers' money. We have no shame and we are going to ask for some more.' That is exactly what the Labor Party are doing under the bills we are currently debating.

Under Labor, not only have Australians had the economy destroyed but they have also been hit with no less than 20 increased taxes in just four year. The Labor Party must be the only party which, when they put through a tax in the Senate, open bottles of champagne and congratulate themselves and say, 'Well done. We've just re-robbed the Australian taxpayer blind. We think they're mugs to pay for our reckless spending.' And who pays the price for this government's continued fiscal incompetence? It is the Australian people. It is the mums and dads of Australia. Governments do not have any money of their own. The money the government has comes from the mums and dads of Australia who pay tax. They have a right to expect that the hard-earned taxes they hand over to the government will be expended appropriately. And what do we have under this government? This government have ensured that Australians are now consistently struggling under rising costs of living due solely and utterly to their reckless spending.

I am going to turn to the portfolio that I refer to often in this place, and that is Immigration and Citizenship. What these appropriation bills are doing in relation to Immigration and Citizenship is seeking an additional $330 million. That is right, the government has come here today cap in hand seeking an additional $330 million in that portfolio alone. In typical Labor style, when these bills were debated in the other place they were described by Minister Shorten as:

These funds are sought in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget ...

What a quaint and innocuous statement which, quite frankly, shows the contempt with which the Labor Party treat Australian taxpayers. Minister Shorten failed to tell Australian taxpayers the real reasons why, in February this year, the Labor government had to come cap in hand to the parliament and ask for an extra $330 million for the Immigration and Citizenship portfolio. Why did they need the money? The additional $330 million is to make up for a further blowout in last year's costs and a further increase for the 2011-12 budget, cost blowouts which, I note, Bill Shorten conveniently did not mention when he introduced the bills into the other place.

Mr Shorten refused to come clean with the Australian people. He refused to be honest with them and tell them why an additional $330 million, on top of what this parliament appropriated in the budget last year, was actually required. If he had any decency at all, if he had any respect for Australian taxpayers, he would at least have said in his speech to the parliament that Labor's decision to abolish the Pacific solution, to abolish temporary protection visas, to abolish the Howard government's proven border protection policies, is the sole reason for what is now a multibillion dollar cost blowout in this particular portfolio area.

Why do I say that is the case? Because the government has now admitted—on Monday, 13 February 2012 in Senate estimates—that Mr Rudd's decision to abolish the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas has increased costs for taxpayers with the budget for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship blowing out by more than $1 billion a year since Labor was elected. In this portfolio they are now looking at a cost blowout in excess of $4 billion. In the Senate estimates I drew attention to the fact that since Labor was elected the cost of running the department of immigration has increased from $1.6 billion in the last year of the Howard government to more than $2.7 billion following the release of the additional estimates figures. When I put this to the department, this is what they said:

Senator CASH: The cost since the 2008-09 budget have increased from less than $500 million over the forward estimates to more than $3 billion based on the current figures. And again I ask you: what was the impact on your department of the changes in policy of the Rudd and Gillard governments? Was it an increase in costs?

Senator Lundy: Senator Cash, you are trying to extract from the official some comment on policy. That is inappropriate.

Senator CASH: I’m asking what the impact on the department was. Was it an increase in costs?

Senator Lundy: You know that.

There is an admission, if ever I heard one, that the Labor government's decision to abolish the former Howard government's proven border protection policies has led directly to the multibillion dollar cost blowout that the Australian taxpayers are now footing as a result of the government's incompetence. It is not the Australian parliament that foots the bill for these budget blowouts; we merely appropriate more money for the Labor Party to spend. It is the mums and dads of Australia who, as I said before, have an expectation that, when they hand over their taxes to the government, those taxes will be spent appropriately. They do not get that in relation to this portfolio area.

In 2008-09 this government made no additional provisions for increased costs as a result of abolishing the Howard government's measures. In 2009-10 the government did it again. They did not provide for an increase in costs, despite the fact that they knew the minute they started rolling back the proven border protection policies of the Howard government that there would be an increase in boat arrivals and that increase in boat arrivals would give rise to further costs in this portfolio area. In the 2009-10 budget the government provided less than $500 million over the entire forward estimates to manage asylum seekers, and yet the direct blowout on the costs alone in this portfolio is now almost $4 billion. The government appropriated $500 million—that was their expectation of projected costs—probably because it sounded good when they read it out in the budget statement, knowing full well that that was never going to be the case. The Australian taxpayers are now faced with this government coming cap in hand to the parliament and asking for additional moneys to cover up the fact that Labor could not get it right.

In just five months since abolishing the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas the Labor government are now spending on boat arrivals what they said they would spend in four years. The result? The result is why we are here today. In relation to this particular portfolio area, the parliament is going to legislate for the government to go and waste a further $330 million to cover what is just another cost blowout. That is on top of when they came back to the parliament last year cap in hand and asked for an additional $295 million, because again they could not get their figures right. There will be $330 million extra this year, on top of $295 million extra last year and $120 million extra the year before. You would think that the government would start to try and properly estimate what this portfolio is going to cost them; $120 million extra, $295 million extra and today we are going to give them another $330 million. That is just for this portfolio area.

The question Australian taxpayers should be asking is: when is this government's insatiable appetite for wasting taxpayers' money going to end? But the sad reality for the Australian taxpayers is that when it comes to border protection the Labor Party only ever had a political strategy—that is, to appease the left of the Labor Party and the Australian Greens. When you enter into an unholy alliance, as the Labor Party have done with the Australian Greens, someone gets to pay for it. In this case the someone is the Australian people, the mums and dads of Australia.

The additional estimates released by the government now show the extent of the current budget blowout in this portfolio area. The actual extent of the blowout is $866 million, or more than 25 per cent of what the government had estimated it was going to spend. I have to say that in May, when the government brings down this alleged surplus, one can only assume that if it has not been able to get its figures right in relation to this portfolio to date—and that is going to translate across a lot more portfolios—it will bring down a magic number, which I believe will be plucked out of the air because it is going to be fake, and the Australian taxpayers will be entitled to think that it is just one great big lie. To date, when it comes to economic credibility, this government has proven time and time again that it has absolutely none.

If we look across the entire immigration portfolio—and this does not include last year's budget blowout—the increase for the four years to 2014-15 is $759 million. This is $559 million, or almost three times, more than the $197 million the Treasurer and Minister Bowen told taxpayers the bill would be for immigration when they released MYEFO for this period last November. In just the two months, between November and February—and I have to say this is quite a good effort—the government has blown out its estimates by more than $560 million. It would be funny if it were not actually true. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that the mums and dads of Australia, who are already struggling under the 20-odd taxes that the Labor Party has so proudly imposed on them in the last four years, will have to foot the bill. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that new reports have been released that show that Australia's electricity prices are at a record high and are only going to get higher as of 1 July when the carbon tax is introduced. But it is not funny. It is not funny because the only people who are going to end up paying for this and, in fact, the only people who are already paying for this, are the Australian taxpayers. They are paying for it because the government is borrowing $100 million every day due to its inability to manage the economy properly. Under both Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard, the Labor government have presided over disaster after disaster, failure after failure, budget blow-out after budget blow-out, and boat arrival after boat arrival—all at the expense of the Australian people. The strong, robust economy that they inherited from the previous, coalition government has now been well and truly destroyed and is but a distant memory. In fact, a $22 billion surplus has been reduced to what is possibly going to be a $37.1 billion deficit. That is not the worst part. The worst part is this: that figure is actually up from what the government, at the last election, thought it would be. The government thought that their fiscal incompetence was so bad that they would be delivering a $10.4 billion deficit, and yet they have had to revise up that estimate and Australians are now looking at a $37.1 billion deficit.

In relation to this portfolio, on his watch the minister has dismantled the last remaining bricks in John Howard's wall of border protection. His budget has blown out to record levels, the detention network has been set on fire a number of times and the minister has admitted that almost 10,000 people will turn up this year and the government will not be turning any boats back before the next election. This is not an attractive legacy, to say the least.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For those listening to this debate—and I know a lot of people do via ABC News Radio—I just want to explain that the appropriations debate is about expenditure of government money. I am sad to see there are not many Labor Party senators listed to speak on this, and there should be because, boy, do they know how to spend other people's money. I make the point first of all that the government itself does not have any money. Anything the government spend is taxpayers' money. All too often the government act as if somehow, when they waste money, they are wasting government money. But, indeed, as I said, the government do not have money. What the government spend is taxpayers' money. It is the money of all those people who have done a hard day's work today and paid taxes on their earnings. It is their money that the government have a history of wasting.

As my colleague Senator Cash said, when we left government just a few short years ago, in 2007, there was about $60 billion in credit, thanks to the hard work of Peter Costello and John Howard and, indeed, the whole of the Howard government over a period of 11 years. We had turned the $96 billion deficit left by the last Labor government into something like $60 billion credit in the bank. In a few short years, this typical, high-spending Labor government has turned that credit into a deficit of something like $130 billion, and it is going up. In spite of promises by the Labor leader to not increase taxes, not bring in a carbon tax and leave the health insurance rebate as it was, we have found that, since the Gillard government has been in power, we have a new carbon tax, a new mining tax and several other new taxes. That just reinforces what I think all Australians now know: talk of Labor and you talk about taxes; talk of Labor and you talk about increased expenditure, usually on projects that are badly administered and money is wasted. This is not new; it is typically brand Labor, whether it be the Gillard government, the Rudd government, the Keating government, the Hawke government, the Bligh government in Queensland or the Beattie government in Queensland. Labor cannot handle money.

I have been in this place for a while and I was here when Labor delivered its last budget, for 1995-96, before the first Rudd budget. Australians were led to believe before the election that the budget was pretty good—that it was almost even. When we took office we found that the deficit in 1995-96 alone was $10.3 billion. An examination of the total debt of the Keating government at the time showed that Labor's total debt had increased to $96 billion. If you look back to the years of Keating and Hawke Labor you will see that a pattern has evolved. Before elections, Mr Hawke and then Mr Keating would promise tax cuts. They would promise that there would be no new taxes. Once they got into power, of course the exact opposite was done. People with a memory for political history might remember that, before the 1993 election, Mr Keating introduced legislation to say there would be a tax cut starting in 1996, following the 1993 election. When he was challenged at the Press Club on 9 February 1993, he said to the unbelieving journalists: 'That tax cut is law—l-a-w law.' It had been legislated, but as soon as Mr Keating won the 1993 election the first thing he did in the next parliament was junk the legislation that had provided for those tax cuts.

I simply make this point: you cannot believe anything any Labor leader says regarding tax cuts or new taxes. I know that in my own state of Queensland the Beattie government and then the Bligh government promised before an election that they would maintain the 8c-a-litre subsidy that Queenslanders—very nicely, thank you—had always had on their fuel. Before the election Ms Bligh promised that would stay, just as she promised, 'We won't be selling any government assets.' But in typical form, regardless of the promises before the election, as soon as Labor got in the first thing they did was remove that 8c-a-litre subsidy, making it much more expensive for all Queenslanders, and particularly those Queenslanders like me and the people I represent in the north—those who live distant from the capital cities and who rely on freight and therefore pay more in fuel costs and the added-on costs. This is just typical Labor: you simply cannot believe promises before an election.

In Queensland, my own state—and, as a senator, I feel justified in talking about my own state in the states house—we used to have a AAA credit rating. Why did we have that? Thanks to good Liberal and National Party governments in the past. You might remember that we were the first state to abolish those insidious death taxes and gift duties. We brought down the very substantial payroll taxes there were, and Queensland was a low-tax state. But it was also one of the wealthiest states, because its financial affairs were well managed by treasurers going back to the year dot—people like Gordon Chalk, going right back into the sixties and seventies. Queensland had a great economic story to tell. But, since Ms Bligh has been there, not only are we now in a position where we cannot pay our nurses in the hospitals because the government has run out of money but we have lost our AAA credit rating. How could that possibly happen with a state as wealthy as Queensland? It is just incredible that any government could mismanage the wealth of Queensland to such an extent that we in Queensland have lost our AAA credit rating.

I laugh to myself as I hear Ms Bligh wandering around Queensland: 'You've got a problem here? Right, we'll throw some money at it. We'll give huge grants. We'll build this road. We'll fix up that bridge. We'll get a new hospital here and a new airport there. Whatever you want, whatever it requires to keep us in power, you can have'—because who cares? It is not her money. It is not the money of Labor Party politicians that she is throwing around; it is taxpayers' money. But you can be assured that all of Ms Bligh's promises, like all of Ms Gillard's promises, are absolutely worthless. How can any Australian believe at any time any promise made by a Labor Party leader before an election? It distresses me that the affairs of our country and our states are in the hands of people who are just incompetent, dishonest when it comes to dealing with money and certainly dishonest in the promises they make to the Australian public. Again, we are not talking about governments' money; we are talking about taxpayers' money.

One of the taxes that will be borne by all Queenslanders is the tax that Ms Gillard specifically promised would not be introduced. I hear Minister Wong saying: 'Look, this carbon tax is needed to save the world. It's going to be great.' I say to her and to any Labor Party senator who might take part in this debate: if the carbon tax is so great, why did you promise before the last election that you would not be introducing a carbon tax? Why did you do it if you are now telling us it is so good for us all? I know the people of Queensland are asking that very same question.

I represent Queensland as a senator, but I try to look after the north of the state, and on behalf of the opposition I look after northern and remote Australia. It just so happens that with all of the big mining development—the development that has just in the last week again been taxed by a Labor government—northern and remote Australia is the area where jobs are being created. People working in the mines in Queensland earn fairly big money, and good luck to them. It is not an easy job, and they are skilled workers—well, many of them are; some of them are unskilled, but they are still earning big money because of the wealth of the mining industry that has been brought on by investment from overseas and from within Australia. Many of those workers fly in and fly out, and there is some controversy on whether that is good or bad; I have views on that, but not for tonight. They live in places like Yeppoon in the state electorate of Keppel, and they buy there because it is a very desirable place. They buy these new houses, but they pay big mortgages. Whilst they are earning big money in the mines and are able to afford these things, that is good, but if they lose their job because of the mining tax or the carbon tax then who is going to pay the mortgage? Who is going to pick up the pieces of that family's life when their life comes to ruin?

The Labor Party, as well as increasing taxes, are about to introduce the quite ridiculous rules on cabotage and coastal shipping. That means that the 800 people living in Gladstone who work in the cement factory there will find that they no longer have a job. Why? Because it will be cheaper to bring cement from South-East Asia into Townsville than to take Gladstone's cement up the coast into Townsville. The shipping will be cheaper. As time goes on the workers in Gladstone will be losing their jobs. I am sure they, as well as the electors of Keppel, will take that into account.

I mention the state electorate of Whitsunday, which takes in the northern beaches of Mackay. They are suburbs that are full of fly-in fly-out or drive-in drive-out workers in the Bowen Basin and the Galilee Basin. They are good citizens and have borrowed big to build very nice houses and build a nice life in those areas. But, if the Labor Party and their mates in the Greens shut down the coal industry, where are those people going to get their jobs? Where are they going to get the money to pay the mortgage? The Greens will tell us that they will get a job building windmills and putting in solar panels. Big deal!

This, I think, is crucial. I know people in Queensland are thinking about this at the moment. They understand that carbon taxes, mining tax and every other tax which you can be assured this federal Labor government and Ms Bligh and the Queensland state government will impose upon them are bad for their jobs. They know that. The Greens and Graeme Wood, their great benefactor, have destroyed the Tasmanian forest industry and destroyed the jobs of all those very honest workers, members of the CFMEU, who had jobs in Tasmania in the forestry industry. Now, having done that, the Greens want us to put another tick on the board. With the help of their big benefactor they are moving to shut down the coal industry in Queensland.

If I shout, Mr Acting Deputy President Furner, I do it because I want every worker in Queensland to understand and to hear this: if you vote Labor, if you vote Greens—and, effectively, it is the same—you are putting yourself out of a job and you are ensuring that your mortgage will be foreclosed upon by the bank.

Government Senators:

Government senators interjecting—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear laughter from the Labor senators, and I hope that when they participate in the debate they will be able to tell me where I am wrong. Where are the jobs coming from—building windmills, building solar panels? Where else are we going to get them—digging hot rocks? Have a look at what is happening in Mackay and Townsville, which are two areas I know well. Mackay is an absolutely booming city. Townsville is doing not too bad either. Why? Because in Townsville we have three mining refineries—copper, zinc and nickel. But, if you keep taxing the mining industry, those factories will shut down. The jobs at Queensland Nickel and the copper refineries at Stuart or at Sun Metals will disappear. Where are those people going to get jobs?

You cannot trust Labor with money and you cannot trust any promise that any Labor politician might make. Ms Bligh in my home state of Queensland is, as I say, running around promising the world. She lied—and I can say this without fear of contradiction—about her only initiative in the Queensland election campaign, and that was to make up lies about Campbell Newman and to make up lies about referring to the CMC. She knew there was nothing in it. She actually admitted she had no evidence. She could not have anyone look at her record. Her total campaign has been about telling lies about a respected and honourable gentleman, Campbell Newman, the son of a former minister in this chamber, former senator Jocelyn Newman. He is a very upright and honest man. All Premier Bligh could do in her campaign was to tell lies about him.

The message I want to leave with senators in this chamber, and with any Queenslanders who might be listening to this broadcast as they drive home from a hard day's work, is that you simply cannot trust Labor with money. What is more important, you cannot trust anything a Labor leader will tell you before an election. I am delighted that Campbell Newman, in understanding the imposition on business of the payroll tax, has committed a new government, a Liberal National Party government, to reducing substantially the payroll tax burden on jobs.

My point is that before the last election Ms Gillard promised no carbon tax and she promised that there was a rock-solid guarantee to maintain the rebate on private health insurance, and what happened? Broken. Before an election a while back Ms Bligh promised that they would retain the 8c subsidy on fuel and they would not sell off Queensland Rail, and immediately they get into power what do they do? They break their word. You cannot simply believe anything that any Labor Party leader will ever tell you. I think it is important in this debate on the appropriations we all understand that mismanagement of money is Labor's hallmark.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must congratulate Senator Ian Macdonald for that outstanding contribution. Whilst he was referencing the appropriation bills so eloquently, I was taken by his reference to Queensland Premier Mrs Bligh and her lack of integrity and the lack of trust that the Queensland people could have in her. It made me cast my mind back to the last South Australian election when, in a fog or a mist of sleaze and innuendo, there was this promise by the then Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann, that he would serve a full term as Premier. But, of course, we know that that was not true. It reinforces the point that Senator Macdonald has made so well: that you cannot trust Labor in any election environment. What Mrs Bligh has said about Campbell Newman, a very good man, is once again illustrative of that.

But I will take issue with one thing that Senator Macdonald said, because Mrs Bligh actually had the wherewithal to admit that she had no evidence for the smears she was making against Campbell Newman. We have a Prime Minister who did not tell the truth to the Australian people, who muttered these infamous words: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She was then elected, then broke that promise, and then had the temerity to say that she was keeping her commitment to pricing carbon—notwithstanding the fact that she had ruled it out in its entirety. If you have to look for any sort of silver lining or you want to gild the lily with respect to Labor premiers, at least Premier Bligh admitted she had no basis for making her grubby smears, unlike our own Prime Minister who has repeatedly misled the Australian people and refuses to admit that even to herself, which is quite extraordinary.

The reason that I wanted to speak on Appropriation Bill (No.3) 2011-2012 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2011-2012 is that before I came into this place I spent a number of years trying to help individuals with their finances. One of the things that I did was write a short book for children to demonstrate and illustrate to them that they could change their financial future by making a few key habits. One of the important principles I have tried to instil as I have distributed tens of thousands of these books complimentarily across Australia is that you should never spend more than you earn. Yet how can that message sink in with our young people today when we have a government that do not understand anything about spending restraint? They see a problem and they think that a tax will solve that problem.

The government have introduced two taxes most recently—the carbon tax and the mining tax—which, incredibly as it sounds, are going to cost more—due to implementation costs and the payments as a result of them—than they are actually going to raise. So the government are going to have a negative bottom line for the budget. So they introduce new taxes which punish everyday Australians—the mums and dads out there who are already battling with their family budgets—and our budget bottom line nationally is going to be worse off. This should concern all of us.

I have to remind this place and I have to remind the Australian people that you cannot borrow your way to prosperity. In the end, you have to pay back the money. In four years, we have $169 billion worth of debt—and the repayment obligation of that will fall not to me, as a 42-year-old in this place, but to my children and possibly their grandchildren. This government are clocking up debt at such a rate they are sending us down the path that European nations have found themselves—and still they refuse to confront the problem, which is their inappropriate and wasteful spending. I do not think I have to remind the Australian people that, if you spend a billion dollars putting pink batts into houses—burn a few down, kill a few people along the way—and a billion dollars to pull them out again, it is not a good policy; it is disgrace.

And this is a disgrace too, because they are asking for another $3 billion to mop up the damage from their carbon tax bill—the carbon tax bill that was promised would never be introduced under any government led by Ms Gillard. The only conclusion I can draw out of that is that Ms Gillard is not leading this government; that there are some other people on the grassy knoll getting involved with the conspiracy theory that Senator Bob Brown was on about this morning. This is a government that are desperately clinging to any hope or prospect of retaining their reign, their seat of power, in this country—even though they have no agenda.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which conspiracy theory?

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludlam, it is actually the conspiracy theory about you receiving $1.6 million for your party to push your own propaganda—and you are holding the Australian people to ransom with your idiotic Green policies that are spewing out of your tent over there.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Bernardi, would you address your comments through the chair and continue on the theme of your—

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed I will. The ridiculous and idiotic policies of the Greens are manifesting themselves in a lacklustre and directionless government led by Ms Gillard. These bills before us are about borrowing $3.1 billion on behalf of the Australian people to mop up the damage done by the government's carbon tax. This carbon tax is going to hurt the hip pocket of every Australian. It is going to damage our international competitiveness. It is going to export jobs. And it is going to make it much harder for the families of Australia to balance their budgets every single week—and they are already struggling. They are already struggling with the rise in utility prices, rising food prices and rising house prices—all this driven by a government that are spending more than they earn. That is the major problem we have.

So we are borrowing $3 billion to fix a problem created by too much wasteful spending on wasteful government policies—policies that have been driven by the Greens. This is not in the national interest; this in the interests of individuals just handing out the Australian taxpayers' money to organisations to further the aims and the ideological agenda of this government and their alliance partners, the Greens. It is not good enough. We are all going to pay the price for this—and not just today. We are going to be paying the price and repaying this debt for decades to come.

It took 10 very good years of coalition government to pay back $96 billion of debt left after the last time the Labor Party were in power. In four years they have ratcheted up $167 billion worth of debt—in four years; it beggars belief—and they do it in the name of saving us from some catastrophe. Well, why are they continuing to borrow money now? Why are they taxing successful and productive enterprises? They should be incentivising enterprises in this country—and not ridiculous ones like windmills and green energy solutions that will never, ever supply our baseload power requirements in this country. They will not, they cannot, and we all know that. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that.

Senator McEwen interjecting—

Unfortunately, Senator McEwen, who continues to rudely interject, does not know that. She lives in that fairyland or that nirvana where, like Senator Hanson-Young, they are going to shut down the steel industry in my home town of Whyalla and turn it into the world's biggest wind farm. What a disaster that would be! That will save plenty of jobs! How many jobs are there in a wind farm? There are not that many, and there is not that much carbon—

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Especially when the wind stops blowing.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the wind stops blowing there are plenty of jobs for people to pull the blades around. Thank you, Senator Cash. There are not that many jobs there and it is not that carbon efficient, if that is what they are worried about when they put those big steel mills up and watch them catch fire and see the birds fly into them—and then there are the health problems that people complain about. It is a fancy. These are people who are living in an idealistic world that will never exist. We have to live in reality and that is in order to stick up for the Australian people. That is what concerns me about this.

How can we suggest to the young people of tomorrow that they need to prepare for their future? That means taking care of the environment, but it means taking practical care of it. It means not spending more than you are earning. It means getting a job—a decent job—and not living on government welfare or sitting back and hoping that the largesse of government will continue to feed, clothe and house you. This is what this government is driving into the community and society. People are now asking themselves: if everyone else is getting a handout, why am I not getting one? There used to be some pride in this country, where people who did not need welfare did not take it. This government is fostering the notion where people feel they are missing out if they are not getting some largesse. We need to stop that, because the country simply cannot afford it.

Whilst this government is borrowing $3 billion to support the notional clean energy future, it is going to try to tax the coalmines out of existence and then subsidise them along the way as well. They are going to be supporting the coalmining abatement technology, which I do not think will ever see the light of day, and they will be doing a whole range of other things. They are selling our nation short and they are selling the Australian people short.

I am short of time tonight, because I know there is at least one more speaker who wants his full allotment of time. But I have to put on the record my concerns for the Australian people about the direction this country is travelling in. It is going down the wrong path. It is a path without any principle. It is a path without boundaries or limits. In fact, I find that there is a complete lack of character in how this government conducts themselves. They will swear that black is white, and then the next day they will say that white is black again. And they call everyone who questions them a fool. They may say that I am a fool or my colleagues are fools. They can call me whatever names they might like to, but in the end someone has to say: the emperor—or the empress—has no clothes on. What they are doing to this country is a travesty and it is incumbent upon the Australian people to share that with their elected representatives so that when we do have an election they can remove this disgraceful government with their spendthrift ways and replace it with some fiscal prudence.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have constant promises, streams of words and verbiage from this government and, indeed, from the Labor Party at state and federal level, as my colleagues Senator Bernardi and Senator Macdonald have outlined. But when it comes to balancing the nation's books, when it comes to delivering the long-promised surplus, Labor's promise that they will deliver a budget surplus is up there with 'I'll call in the morning'—and, I might say, it is also up there with 'I'll only be 10 minutes' in Senate estimates committees.

There is a moral issue to running up constant budget deficits. There is an equity issue to running up constant budget deficits. That equity issue is that every dollar borrowed today is merely a dollar of deferred taxation. As well as the interest cost, it is something to be paid back by future taxpayers. So for all the purposes of indulgence today and achieving whatever the government wants in the short term rather than investing for the long term, the truth is that that is merely deferring the cost to future taxpayers. That is something I take seriously and it is something that the coalition take seriously, because government debt is a bad thing. We have heard arguments from ministers of this government for months, even years, about how they apparently saved all these jobs during the global financial crisis—which we now know was mainly a North Atlantic and European banking crisis. There is no evidence that those jobs were saved, particularly with the second stimulus package.

We saw the Auditor-General's report yesterday into the bike paths, that pointed out that there could not be a quantification of the number of jobs produced. Shovelling money out the door and sending cheques of $900—including to dead people and prisoners, I might add—does not protect an economy. What protects an economy is economic reform, productivity-driving reform and a government that is balancing its books in order to take pressure off interest rates and, in this case in particular, to take pressure off the dollar, because 80 per cent of the Commonwealth borrowings are coming from overseas. On top of the massive borrowings being racked up by state Labor governments over the last 10 years, that actually does put Australia in a precarious debt situation.

In order for every company in Australia to be able to borrow money, either through their bank or through their financial markets or through bond holders, we need a situation where the government is not in that market constantly putting pressure on demands for money. Our banks are very dependent upon overseas funding, although that has taken a slight change lately with the increase in savings—which I might say is a good thing, yet the government seems to try to say that it is the reason why retail spending is weak. People saving is something that we spent the 1980s and 1990s trying to encourage. So that in itself is a positive: people investing for their own future. What is a negative about it is why people are doing it. People are doing it because they are scared. People are doing it because at the same time the government is borrowing tens of billions of dollars a year and trumpeting about how strong the economy is, people in the most populous areas of Australia are feeling the pinch. The small business community in particular is feeling the pinch. Retail spending is low. It is all because of a lack of confidence. What we hear from this government and have heard through the last several budgets delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister is a message that is being delivered with a forked tongue. When we first started back in 2008, the first budget was all about the inflation genie. It had escaped the bottle. The problem was the economy was running too fast—not fast enough for Labor to drive the budget into deficit, mind you—and we had to pull back spending. As the shadow Treasurer has said, we have heard Wayne Swan talk the talk a great deal on tough budgets and tough decisions, but we have never actually seen any action.

After that we had the great crisis that fulfilled the dreams of every member of the Labor Party and the Greens of implementing a statist economic policy that led to massive new taxes, a massive amount of regulation and the fatal conceit that somehow the government could save the economy. In a small, traded economy with a floating exchange rate, the old notion of Keynesian stimulus is not something that has a consensus that it works. The government can quote economists that say it does; there are many who say it does not. But sending out $900 cheques, which we know led to booms in poker machines—and Jerry Harvey said was fantastic for the sale of flatscreen TVs—the whole idea of sending out money like that, when we know a lot of it was saved as well, to somehow save the economy is based on a 30- or 40-year-old notion of an economy.

It surprises me that the present Labor Party is naught but a shadow of the Labor Party that existed in the eighties and which the coalition has previously given credit to. That Labor Party did support policies that opened the economy; it did support policies on competition and did drive difficult but necessary economic reform. Those very changes—the floating of the exchange rate, the removal of tariff barriers and the opening of our economy to much more international trade—actually made the whole notion of Keynesian stimulus, like it was the 1960s and a closed economy, completely superfluous. The government is wrong on that, and that little report yesterday about the bike path in Byron Bay illustrates it in a micro sense. The more we go on, the more we know that the notion of stimulating the economy through simply borrowing money and shovelling it out the door has no place in a modern, liberalised market economy.

But I am not actually sure that that is what the government wants. What we have seen and what these appropriation bills represent is yet another step in the statist approach that this government entails. We have had new taxes; the two big ones which have been debated in recent months are the carbon tax and the mining tax. We have had the attacks on private health insurance. Apparently the Medicare levy should be universal but the rebate should not. I state again that the very reason the rebate was structured as a rebate was to ensure that it was worth more to lower-income earners than high-income earners. If a person on the lowest tax bracket had a tax deduction for private health insurance, they did not get as much benefit as a person on the highest tax bracket. The Howard government intentionally structured the private health insurance rebate as a flat rebate to ensure it meant more to lower-income earners. The millions of Australians earning under $50,000 are going to face higher increases in their private health insurance than they otherwise would because of the policies of those opposite. There is no other way to put it. We know it is going to lead to people dropping out of private health insurance. We know that is going to lead to a reduction in the size of the pool. We know it is also going to impact upon the type of people who purchase private health insurance. But the government does not care, because it wants to continue its war against the private health sector even though more than half of all the surgical procedures in this country are performed in private hospitals and even though the Productivity Commission in its substantial report several years ago outlined that in many cases the private sector is cheaper. The dream of Labor and the Greens of a national health service for Australia is going to take precedence over the welfare of Australians.

We have seen it in education, where the Gonski review is nothing but a charade and a bail to continue Labor's war on nongovernment and independent schools. When you have in there terms like 'capacity to pay'—

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You haven't read it, have you?

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection, Senator McLucas. Labor has just got better at hiding its intention. You do not use the term 'hit list' anymore; you use a term like 'capacity to pay' hidden amongst pages and pages. The point is that the term 'capacity to pay' apparently only matters when we are talking about people at nongovernment schools. That means that those in nongovernment primary schools in particular could face massive increases in their fees. This is because nongovernment primary schools, particularly the Catholic sector, are often at a much lower fee level. So if we are going to start looking at the capacity of parents to pay regardless of what the fees are at the moment, that can only be a vehicle for Labor to force the parents of people sending their children to nongovernment schools—in this case, Catholic primary schools—to pay higher fees. Again it is continuing its statist approach because there is nothing better than a state-run monopoly.

They have done it with tax. The carbon tax is nothing but an internal tariff on our economy. I was interested in the first speech of the foreign minister, Senator Carr, earlier today. He talked about George Reid being a Free Trader. I think he slurred the great Alfred Deakin a bit much. I would like to point out that both of them were implacable opponents of the Labor Party. Both of them might have fought over the Federation of Australia, but it was the Labor Party that opposed the Federation of Australia. It was Liberals, Free Traders and Protectionists who fought for the Federation of Australia. Labor has always had a chip on its shoulder about that. But the foreign minister lauded Mr Reid for his opposition to customs duties and tariffs because they impact on the poorest. We know they are regressive in their effect. We know that tariffs on everything from textiles, clothing and footwear to everything else that Australia had built up by the mid-1980s were highly regressive in their impact. We know, as Senator Carr outlined, that they made the cost of living higher than it needed to be.

What is the carbon tax? The carbon tax is nothing but an internal tariff. If I purchase a television made overseas, there is no carbon tax on that regardless of the myths propagated by those opposite. This is the highest and broadest based carbon tax in the world. If I buy a television from overseas, there is no carbon tax component of that. If I bought one in Australia—if there were to be one made in Australia—then, quite frankly, there would be. You might say, 'There are no TVs made in Australia,' Senator McLucas. Let's go to cars, where the cost of building a car in Australia will be $500 more expensive because of the carbon tax. How on earth are we to take seriously the government's complaint about wanting to maintain a car industry in Australia when they increase the cost of production here that is not faced by all the Mazdas and Volkswagens rolling off the ships in the Port of Melbourne?

It is nothing short of ludicrous, but it does go to the core of the ideal Labor and Greens economy. We see that in this budget, because what they want is patronage and the ability to tax and to hand out favours.

I will go through a few of the things that are off budget which have a substantial impact on the financial state of the Commonwealth, even though they are not technically in the budget papers. We have $50 billion for the NBN, which I have no doubt will in decades to come be still quoted in this place as one of the greatest misconceived ideas. I have little doubt that in the coming years it will be seen, a bit like the Victorian desalination plant, as a great boondoggle for Labor's favoured mates and particular trade unions.

We have the $10 billion clean energy fund. The price of the Greens to get the carbon tax was $10 billion. The clean energy fund precludes certain technology regardless of whether it is clean. It cannot do anything about coal because coal is inherently evil. It cannot be touched even if someone did make it clean in a way that would satisfy the Greens. Coal is the problem. This is a $10 billion fund that is basically picking losers, because this is for commercial proposals that cannot get private sector funding and that are not viable under the mandatory renewable energy target or many of the other programs that are in place. So we are going to hand over $10 billion for these projects, even though they fail those first two hurdles.

I come from Victoria. My generation is still scarred from Tricontinental and the Victorian Economic Development Corpora­tion of John Cain and Rob Jolly and, subsequently, the Kirner government. It is nothing more than picking losers, but the government has hidden it off the budget. The government has not committed to any of the funding requirements in the Gonski review, which parents should rightly be afraid about. The government are now talking about how apparently the mining tax—which this place debated late last week and early this week—is going to somehow deliver increased superannuation.

I turn to the area of small business because there is a great myth—and the government has tried to conflate the two topics intentionally—that somehow the mining tax will pay for superannuation. Every employer in this country, small and large, knows that the mining tax does not pay a cent of superannuation. That is going to come out of workers' pockets and in the short term it is going to come out of employers' pockets. Mind you, these are employers, particularly in small business, who are already facing the highest costs of doing business in a decade. Today we saw the report, based on more recent data than the government likes to admit, that Australia is one of the most expensive places in the world for electricity.

I note that my home state of Victoria is the fifth most expensive place in the world for electricity out of the 70-odd markets surveyed. This is a state where Sir John Monash built the State Electricity Commission, based on technology from Europe, with our massive deposits of brown coal. I heard my friend the Minister for Energy and Resources in Victoria say today on AM that Victoria has more energy stored in its brown coal reserves than the entire North West Shelf. That is how much brown coal we have—enough for hundreds of years. It used to be cheap to have electricity in Victoria. It was something we aspired to. I think it is something we still should aspire to. But the government seeks to use a carbon tax to force up the cost even higher.

The Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Senator Wong, in answering questions always tries to dodge this key point. The carbon tax is intended to force up the cost of electricity. I do not know about you, Mr Acting Deputy President, but I do not want my grandmother and other people's grandmothers who grew up in a different generation and who value a dollar because of their life experiences—we all know stories of people not turning the heat on in winter and not turning the air conditioner on in summer because they do not want to worry about the power bill—thinking that they should skimp on turning on the air conditioner on a 42-degree Melbourne February day or turning on the heater on a four-degree Melbourne July night. Whether it was Sir John Monash or Henry Bolte or people previously—and I dare say even the Labor Party previously—cheap energy was considered to be something this country should be proud of. It was a competitive advantage, but now we have this delusion that somehow by making energy more expensive we are going to transform our economy. Economics 101: if you make an input cost like energy more expensive, you are going to suffer an economic welfare loss. There is no other way about it.

The delusional Greens in the corner somehow think that simply forcing up the price of electricity that you and I and our parents, friends and relatives pay in our houses to turn on a light will miraculously bring about a new technology. That is flawed logic. There is an old economist saying: the Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones. I hasten to add that it did not end because they introduced a stone tax either. The Stone Age ended because someone invented bronze. There is no lack of incentive for anyone around the world at the moment to be exploring new technologies. It is the story of humanity. Only a Labor-Greens government suffers from the conceit that somehow a new tax will lead to a new technology—somewhere someone is coming up with a way to make the windmill and the solar panel work better because of a new tax. Does anyone here seriously think that those efforts will be stronger on 2 July this year than they are on 29 June?

That is absolutely untrue. The government says the economy is still going to grow. Of course, it is going to grow, but the truth that this government will not admit is that it will grow by a lot less if only we did not have a carbon tax. The true cost is in the difference between the growth curves, but this government and their Greens allies like to pretend that by forcing up the cost of energy we are miraculously going to transform ourselves into a new economy. We may transform ourselves into a new economy because no-one in the world is doing what we do. We may transform ourselves from what was once a shining beacon of the world with low government debt, high productivity growth and high economic growth to be something like Europe.

Labor and the Greens through budgets like this are doing nothing less than seeking to Europeanise Australia. I notice Senator Ludlam smiling. They are trying to create a highly regulated state, where the government determines how people go about their business by forcing up energy costs and increasing regulation everywhere from the workplace to occupational health and safety. I am reminded of the story about Napoleon dismissing the English before the Battle of Waterloo as nothing but a nation of shopkeepers. What he did not understand was that it was because they were shopkeepers that they won. It was the free market economy of post Scottish enlightenment Britain, the start of the Industrial Revolution. It was the high-street shops and businesses that drove innovation. It was that market that was so important. What we are seeing in budgets like this is nothing less than an attempt to reregulate our economy in a way that we have not seen since the 1960s. It is going to lead to an economic welfare loss for every Australian as their costs go up. We are seeing GDP growth per capita of less than one per cent. That is why people are feeling the pinch.

It makes no sense to force up the cost of doing business, to force up the cost of buying everyday household goods and—

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for the consideration of these bills has expired. The question is that the bills now be read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.