Senator RYAN (Victoria) (3:25 PM) —I am amazed by the gumption of the government. This government that has run up a level of debt that was unprecedented two years ago walked into the building yesterday and claimed credit for that debt being $50 billion less than it otherwise would have been only 12 months ago but three times what it would have been two years ago.
Why is it that whenever we hear the word ‘reform’ from this government, every taxpayer in Australia has to reach for their wallet or in this case, with Labor’s mining supertax, to reach for their superannuation? It is because this government is incapable of taking a difficult decision.
Not only does this government lack the ticker of Hawke, Keating or Peter Walsh, it also lacks the albeit flawed philosophical commitment of Whitlam. Since this government announced its mining supertax, this government has channelled Rex Connor. We have had the Prime Minister with his xenophobic campaign against foreign investment running around to try and justify his mining supertax, the same foreign investment which this budget counts on. Of course, there is one big difference between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and Rex Connor and that is that Rex Connor only wanted to borrow $5 billion, he did not want to borrow $150 billion. Secondly, Rex Connor saw development as good. He tried to facilitate the development of Australia’s resources whereas this government is trying to kill it.
A decade ago, when the previous coalition government undertook the most drastic tax reform—the most significant Australia had seen since World War II—it convinced the states to abolish a raft of taxes and reduce other taxes—promises that many of them have not followed through—and it cut income tax rates. The catchcry was: ‘It is not a new tax, it is a new tax system’. Under this government, the Labor Party, it is not a new tax system; it is just a new tax. This is a tax on our most productive export sector; a tax on that sector which did more than most to get Australia through the global recession, the sector that is most exposed to growth in our own region. This government has done to the sector what it has done to everything else—whether health care or the so-called education revolution—it has created the illusion of reform. By throwing around words like ‘reform’ and ‘revolution’ often enough it seems to think they will eventuate. But it takes no difficult decisions.
There are no real spending cuts in this budget, despite what they may say. The two per cent real growth cap represents a substantial increase in government expenditure of over $40 billion over the forward estimates. Government is getting significantly larger. In every sense this is a state Labor budget in spirit and in practice. It has rubbery forecasts. It has massive increases in expenditure and any semblance of claimed financial responsibility is based on one thing only and that is a dramatic increase in taxation. All the promises are on the never-never. The surplus is never today, it is never tomorrow, it is always after the next election, just like it is for every state Labor government when you see increases in taxes and massive failures in services. This surplus is illusory. Let us put it in context. At $1 billion allegedly in three years time, it is less than one-third of one per cent of government expenditure. That is a rounding error, a typographical error, a $1 billion surplus out of a $350 billion budget. That is not going to happen, it is an illusion.
I recall when the former Treasurer Paul Keating promised he was ‘bringing home the bacon’. There was a small surplus promised, although in real terms it was larger than what this government is promising. He said he was ‘bringing home the bacon’. This was just before he put the budget into such massive deficit that it took the last coalition government a decade to pay it off. Labor then ran up tens of billions of dollars of debt for the same reason: no discipline in spending and an inability to take difficult decisions.
But there are a few things in this budget that I am sure the Labor Party’s trade union mates will be proud of. I did pick up last night that there is a $10 million grant to the trade unions for the Trade Union Education Foundation. The government, of course, will just try to slip that in on a page of the budget: $10 million to the paymasters. It is nice to know they are doing well, but future Australian taxpayers will pay for a long time.
Question agreed to.