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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the 2012-13 Budget.

Here we have it again: another year, another increase in borrowings; another year, yet more put on the national credit card. Year after year, in all my time here, we have seen government ministers come in here and make devout promises, putting their hand on the Bible and swearing these forecasts are correct, swearing that it will all be better next year. But what we have seen year after year is nothing but rhetoric. These are all empty promises. What we heard from the Treasurer in the other place last night will again be proven to be nothing but an empty promise. This government, when it comes to managing the nation's accounts, has absolutely no credibility. In the words of Senator Wong this afternoon, she had determination to deliver these results; but results speak louder than any determination or any contrived commitment to serious management of the nation's finances. Labor's achievements in this regard are truly extraordinary. What we have seen after the budget tabled last night is a tally of $174 billion in deficits over only four years of Labor budgets. They have turned net assets into net debt of $145 billion.

At this point I would like to take up the issue raised by Senator Joyce with Senator Wong this afternoon about net versus gross debt. Net debt is an important comparison, but what the government does not want to explain when it talks about net debt and when it offsets the gross borrowings mainly with the Future Fund—a fund created by the former coalition government, I hasten to add—is that the Future Fund is already taken into account when we look at other liabilities the Commonwealth owes. If you want a fair comparison, taking into account the assets held in the Future Fund and other Commonwealth assets, you should also look at the other liabilities of the Commonwealth. But that is not what this government actually wants to talk about. This government wants to count the Future Fund twice, and it does that by trying to pretend that the superannuation liabilities that the Future Fund was set up to cover are not being in any way considered when we take into account net debt. That is a very important point, because to every Australian taxpayer those superannuation liabilities are just as due and we are just as liable for them as any bond issued by the Commonwealth and held by the latest overseas investor that has funnelled the money into this government. The point that Senator Joyce raises is very important. You cannot count the Future Fund twice and net it off against gross debt without taking into account the liabilities for which it was set up to fund and has not yet done so completely.

In the current financial year alone, the government's forecast has been shown to be completely without basis in reality. Less than 18 months ago we heard that the current financial year was going to have a $12 billion deficit. A year ago this week it was going to be $22 billion. Last December it was going to be $37 billion. It was going to be $44 billion as of last night. God only knows what it is going to be by 30 June, because if we keep running up that scale it will get into the high-forty billions, because this government is simply unable to manage the nation's accounts.

We are paying $8 billion a year in interest. It works out at $22 million a day that we are paying in interest—not for what great leaders like Sir Henry Bolte might have done, in building freeways and national assets, but merely to have funded the cash splash and the electoral bribes this government is so enamoured with. There is a better way to look at the $22 million a day. Everyone should put a jar in their home kitchen and every day, every member of their family should put a $1 coin in it. It is costing a dollar a day from every Australian just to service the interest bill that this government has run up. And that is not a dollar a day that you can put towards a holiday, to paying off the mortgage or to something you might buy. That is a dollar a day purely to fund and service the debt this government has created. It is an extraordinary level of debt.

Of course, today we heard the catch-all excuse: the global financial crisis, the excuse that keeps on giving. Indeed, a cynic might wonder that today from Senator Wong we actually heard a bit of a warm up, a bit of a simmer of the global financial crisis excuse. I bet that this time next year, if you are still in office, we will be hearing that again. Something happens and the government will always find an excuse. Well, this government is out of excuses. No-one believes you. No-one believes this government will deliver a surplus. It will not be in office to do so. And we will never see the final accounts. This government has got a track record of debt, deficit and deceit.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In taking note of answers given to questions without notice today, what those on the other side obviously fail to understand is that this is a budget for working Australians. It is not a budget just for a few select people out in the community, which is what those on the other side want and are always pushing. This budget is about spreading the benefits of the boom so that all corners of the country benefit from it, not just one single state or one single area. It is going to bring much-needed new financial relief to families and businesses that have been under pressure. There are a number of ways we are going to do that and I will talk about them in a minute.

We are returning to surplus on time and as promised, and those on the other side just cannot deal with that. They just do not want to deal with it. They have got a huge mental block when it comes to accepting that we are actually managing to do that and will achieve it. What that does is put paid to their last few years of argument that we could not do it, so they have to stand up and oppose it. I notice that Senator Bushby is still in the chamber. I would like to know what Senator Bushby thinks he is going to say to all those families that he wants to deny the Schoolkids Bonus to. I would like to know what Senator Abetz is going to say to all those Tasmanian families. In fact, Mr Deputy President, I would like to know what you are going to say to all those families that your government is denying cash to—that is, the $410 for each child in primary school or $820 for each child in high school under the Schoolkids Bonus.

I do not know whether opposition senators are aware that there are 34,800 families in Tasmania that expect to receive some of that income, and 30,600 families in Tasmania are currently missing out on the education tax refund, which the Schoolkids Bonus is replacing. It is replacing it for a reason. It is because people were not claiming what they were entitled to. Families are struggling. We know families are struggling. We want to help those families. The best way we can help those families is through the education process and making it easier for them so they do not have to save their receipts, so they do not have to put in paperwork and so they can get the money upfront. I challenge the opposition senators from Tasmania, in particular, to stand up in front of those families and go to those schools and tell them that they are going to deny those families and those children the cash that they could use to help with their education, whether it be music lessons, excursions or whatever.

I was bitterly disappointed to hear the other night an implication that parents would waste the money, that they would not spend it on their children's education. But I am absolutely certain that when the baby bonus came in and members of the opposition were asked about people receiving it their argument was that they did not really care what people spent the money on; they just wanted people to have the money. So I do not understand the hypocrisy, meanness of spirit and the distrust of families and of the parents of these children by the opposition, claiming that they will spend the money on other things and that it will not be spent on education.

One of the benefits of the surplus is obviously that it will protect low- and middle-income Australians and those in the community most vulnerable. It will do that through things like the aged-care reform, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the blitz that we are going to have on the dental waiting lists as well. We will achieve a surplus, despite the global uncertainty. We will deliver a surplus in a targeted and responsible way, with targeted and respon­sible savings that help, as I said, those low- and middle-income Australians.

Since the budget the Liberals have once again revealed their true colours. They continue to work against working families in Australia. To those senators from Tasmania on the other side who continue to work against those working families in Tasmania I say: you really need to hang your heads in shame. I am nearly speechless trying to think of the words to use when those people in Tasmania who you and I represent— (Time expired)

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers by government senators to questions from coalition senators. I listened with great interest to Senator Bilyk and I noted the challenges that she made in talking about how last night they delivered a budget for working Australians. This budget is all politics. It is a political budget. It is a budget that is determined to save a government with deep internal divisions and leadership instability. It is a government that is in trouble, and the thing that a government in trouble does when it starts panicking is splash money around.

Everybody knows, as Senator Bilyk rightly points out, that people like it if you offer money to them. They think that is a great thing. But it is incumbent on government to be responsible in how it spends taxpayer money. It needs to be able to use the fiscal tools it has available to it to try to create an economic environment in which business can thrive, wealth can be created, jobs can be created, people can get jobs and money can move around. In an overall sense, they need to grow the cake so that everybody has an opportunity to partake in a strong economy, get a good, secure job and be able to look after themselves and their families. Irresponsible decisions such as when govern­ments take great slabs of money and throw it all around in a desperate attempt to cling on to power in the falling days of their govern­ment just do not cut it. It smacks of political desperation. There is a lack of any coherence in this budget and a lack of any narrative, which suggests that this government does not have an ongoing, long-term plan to put Australia on a long-term, stable economic footing.

The senator also talked about returning to surplus on time. She seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the government has actually delivered a surplus. But the fact is that all that happened last night was that the Treasurer handed down a piece of paper that predicted a surplus which we will not know about until about September next year, at which time the election will have come and gone and the Australian people will have had no opportunity to determine whether that surplus was delivered.

Looking at the Labor Party's record on surpluses, even under the current term of this Labor government since 2007 the Labor government have handed down surplus predictions. The Treasurer has stood up in parliament in the other place and said, 'We will deliver a surplus.' Has he? No. In fact, it has been something like 23 years since the Labor Party have actually delivered a surplus, despite predicting a surplus on more than one occasion while in government. There is a world of difference between the Treasurer standing up in the other place and saying, 'We will deliver a surplus on time,' and delivering that in actual fact. Before we know whether a surplus will be delivered, we need to see how much money came in and how much was spent. If you look at just the current year, they started off predicting a $12 billion deficit. That has blown out over the course of MYEFO and other updates to a current fiscal position as of last night of a $44 billion deficit. As Senator Ryan said, goodness knows what that will actually be when we find out what it is in the end. It is on a massive upwards trajectory. It is likely to be in the 50s.

So when the Treasurer stood up last night and said, 'We are returning to surplus on time,' and when Senator Bilyk stands up in this place and says it, it is laughable that anyone would believe it. Their record shows that anything they predict will fail to be delivered. Just in this current year they have a black hole of over $20 billion in their budget. They have a $22 billion black hole in their budget.

That leads to the next issue I want to raise, and that is, as the minister was discussing, the increase in the debt limit. We have gone from $75 billion to $150 billion to $200 billion to $250 billion—and now we have to go up to $300 billion. You do not need to increase your borrowing limit if you are spending less than you earn. If you are spending less than the amount of money that is coming in, you do not need to ask for a bigger overdraft. It is just farcical. It is an admission on the government's own part when they say, 'We need to increase the debt limit,' that they do not expect that the $1.5 billion will actually be delivered. They are building in, hidden amongst the appropria­tion bills, this $50 billion increase in the hope that nobody will notice it, because they acknowledge themselves that their debt will go higher. (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do wish to make a contribution to today's debate but, before I do, I want to say that I have read a number of articles in the newspapers lately and it is amazing but there is a common theme that comes out of them, and that is, 'Be careful of what the Liberals say and what the Liberals will do.' Listening to the contributions coming from Senator Ryan and Senator Bushby today, I am absolutely confused. I hear Senator Bushby talking about jobs. I hear Senator Bushby talking about creating employment oppor­tunities. This would be the same Senator Bushby who voted against the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan, the program that kept thousands and thousands of Australians employed through the global financial crisis.

I will not say that the contribution from Senator Ryan was hysterical because it was anything but. To hear Senator Ryan talking about nation-building stuff, you might think the global financial crisis was something that we made up. For goodness sake! I do not know how far the silver spoon was shoved into Senator Ryan's mouth but if he did not realise just how close we were to recession through those last couple of years of 2009 and 2010 then I do not know what planet he was on. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have that side of the chamber bagging the living daylights out of us. They are bagging us because we spend money to create employment, bagging us because we stimulate the economy to keep people employed, bagging us because we made a massive injection of some $16.2 billion during that terrible financial time in order to keep business people employed and to build fantastic facilities for generations of young Australians to come. Here is the rub: I have been to the opening of probably 50 or 60 buildings under the Building the Education Revolution, which was a federal Labor government initiative, and, holy be, who is in the crowd getting their photos taken? Have one guess.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who? You tell us!

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Canning, Mr Don Randall, has been at every single one. Good on you, Don! He voted against them, but that does not matter. What an insult!

Getting back to the budget: as we have been clearly told, the government is returning the budget to surplus. In one breath, we have the Liberals, ably assisted by the Nationals, bagging us for spending money to create opportunity and employ­ment and telling us we are spending too much money. In the next breath, remem­bering that the government is going to deliver a surplus next year, they condemn us for not spending money. The sad thing is that, year in, year out, we have to go through this nonsense, this charade. We bring down budgets, year in, year out, and we have the same old argument. The other side of the political fence condemns every opportunity and every positive that is created by the government, but the social side actually congratulates the government, because this budget will share the benefits of the boom.

As everyone knows, I come from a mining state and I fully support the mining industry. I have never said anything else. But the sad part, Mr Deputy President, is that your colleagues from Western Australian are hypocritical. We know that in Western Australia there are two speeds. There is absolutely no doubt that we have a patchwork economy. We have an industry that is thriving—it is bubbling along—and that is employing a lot of Australians, not just Western Australians. We have industries that hang off the mining industry. If they are lucky enough to be servicing the mining industry or to be otherwise involved in the mining industry, they are doing well too. But the boom is a double-edged sword and there are many industries in Western Australia that really are suffering because of it. They are suffering because they are losing experienced people. They cannot compete with the wages that are being paid in the mining industry. We have industries, such as my old industry, in which trucking families have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on building companies but have trucks parked at the back of the yard against the fence, not because they are not paying the right money but because they cannot compete. Let us look at aged-care facilities. Who would cook in an aged-care facility for $30,000 a year when you could get $130,000 at a mine? (Time expired)

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will begin with Senator Sterle's comments about jobs. It is quite amazing that the reduction in company tax is no longer there. Let me quote the Prime Minister:

If you are against cutting company tax, you are against economic growth. If you are against economic growth, then you are against jobs.

Those were the words of the Prime Minister. She is obviously against jobs because the government is not going to cut the company tax rate. I am sorry to see that Senator Sterle is leaving the chamber, because I want to talk about the treatment of the transport industry in this budget.

Mr Deputy President, as you know, when the GST came in on 1 July 2000, 18½c of excise per litre was returned to the truckies. Of the 38c excise, truckies paid a road user charge of 19½c and the remaining 18½c went back to the them. Now the truckies are going to get only 12½c back. This government has taken 6c a litre from every truckie in Australia. That will apply to any truck with a tare weight of 4½ tonnes or more. The transport industry uses eight billion litres of diesel a year, so that 6c equates to an extra $480 million. That is how much tax the government is adding to our transport industry. But it gets worse: on 1 July 2014 the Labor government's carbon tax is going to add almost 7c a litre to the truckies' diesel tax. That will be another $515 million on top of the $480 million—$1 billion extra a year in diesel tax on our truckies, the people who carry our nation. Yet the government says it is creating jobs. Of course, regional Australia will be the worst affected by this. The town where I live does not have a railway line. Everything comes in on the road; all our exports, our cattle from abattoirs and our wheat all go out on the road. It is a tax on regional Australia especially.

Talking about the budget, we will never see this amazing $1.5 billion surplus. We will probably have an election in August next year before the real figures are released in September next year, because the figures will show the budget in the red because the government will be borrowing again. The government has said that it is allowing for an extra $39 billion increase in revenue. It is not going to get that. It will not get an extra $39 billion. We have a five per cent deterioration in our terms of trade, business is quiet—of course the mining industry is doing well in some areas, but retail sales are quiet—and regional Australia is doing it tough, especially in those areas that do not have mines. That money will not come in.

According to the budget two years ago, the government was going to borrow $12 billion. Twelve months ago that had become more than $22 billion. Six months ago it went to $37 billion. Now, as we found out yesterday, it has gone to $44 billion that is going to be borrowed in this financial year alone. To have budgeted two years ago to borrow $12 billion and have it now come in at $44 billion is not even a good guess. That is not projecting budget forecasts or being anywhere close to forecasts; it is simply a bad guess. That is why the Australian people do not trust this government. They do not trust this government because of its broken promises on the carbon tax, they do not trust it because of its waste of money on school buildings, pink batts and the so-called stimulus package—job creating programs that have led us into this much debt and that have of course had a huge effect on raising interest rates over that period. If we are going to have a budget surplus of $1.5 billion, why are we raising the credit limit to $300 billion? Senator Joyce asked Senator Wong what would be the gross dollar amount at which it would peak. Would it be $278 billion? Would it be $290 billion? We could not get an answer. That is nothing unusual from Senator Wong. Tell us the truth. Let the Australian people know the truth.

We know your history of managing money. Throughout my life I have seen that every time a Labor government has been elected in a state or here in Canberra it has sent us broke. No mistake; it happens all the time, and this government is no exception. It is amazing that road funding is going to be reduced by so much. The government is taking money out of roads but talks about looking after infrastructure and productivity. This budget will never deliver a surplus. In September 2013 we will find out the real facts.

Question agreed to.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Bob Carr) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to the overseas aid budget.

The issue here is that Australia made a commitment to increase overseas aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015 as part of our contribution to reaching the Millennium Development Goals. What is more, the coalition supported that goal and has done so many times, including only last year when we put a motion through the Senate as a tripartite agreement to commit to that. There is a similar motion on the books today, and I hope that I will see the coalition continue to give its support, given that the government has cut its commitment.

The government's decision is appalling. The United Nations endorsed a target to meet the Millennium Development Goals to end poverty and hunger, to ensure universal education and gender equity and to improve child and maternal health. That target should have been 0.7 per cent of gross national income in foreign aid. That is the Greens policy; nevertheless, the government and the coalition had agreed to 0.5. Now we are going to see $3 billion taken out of that over the forward estimates. It is quite disingenuous to hear Minister Carr say, 'Oh, other countries have also cut their commit­ment to overseas aid.' One of the countries I can tell you about is the Netherlands. Yes, the Netherlands has cut its overseas aid budget, but it has done so to go from 0.75 per cent to 0.6 per cent. So, even with the cut, the Netherlands is well above what Australia has committed to. The point here is that other counties—Norway, Denmark and Sweden—have already surpassed the 0.7 per cent. The UK is on track to meet 0.7 per cent by 2013 in spite of the appalling economic circumstances in the UK, where we have already seen the UK Secretary of State for International Development say that he will not balance the books on the back of the poorest people in the world. So even the UK is sticking with its commitment to 0.7 per cent. The Netherlands, the UK, Germany, France and Ireland are all contributing more as a percentage of gross national income to overseas aid than Australia, and none of those countries has a surplus.

What is even more appalling is that we are making a bid for the UN Security Council, saying that Australia does what Australia says. What a joke! We have promised in the international community, globally accepted, that we will meet 0.5 per cent by 2015, and now we are not going to. For every statement that Minister Carr makes saying, 'Yes, look what our aid budget is already doing,' what is it that it will not be doing now—and extra—because we have decided to cut it? If you look at our nearest neighbours, what about a fair go? Last night the Treasurer said that the budget would look after the most vulnerable and uphold a fair go. Well, what about a fair go for the 15 mothers who will die or suffer permanent disability today alone giving birth in PNG? They are the statistics and that is the sort of issue we are dealing with. Or, as the Australian Council for International Development has said, 'Tonight we could have saved an extra 800,000 lives.' They are calling on the coalition to keep the promise that Labor has broken in relation to 0.5 per cent of gross national income in foreign aid.

We are living in the Asian century. Eighteen of our nearest neighbours are developing countries. Look at East Timor, where children are still dying of preventable illnesses because they cannot access vaccinations, where children are still starving. Children do not have access to universal education and women are not getting the support they need during their pregnancies and during childbirth. It is appalling that we, as the wealthiest country in the world, will not support developing countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is a matter of shame for this country. Not only that, we are also not supporting the most vulnerable in Australia, those who are on Newstart.

But I particularly want to address the question of overseas aid, because it is more of a sleight of hand when you understand that Australia, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.