Page 1213 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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federal budget. It seems that again we have the churlishness of the Stanhope government. They are so churlish when it comes to non-government motions in this place on private members’ day that, even when there is a motion that commends the Chief Minister, if the words are not their words, if they are the opposition’s words, they cannot possibly use them and have to amend them, even taking out congratulatory words.
The small-mindedness of the Stanhope government when it comes to opposition and private members’ business is quite telling. It cannot stand to have any proposal put forward by people who are not part of the ALP. What we have here today is a pretty straightforward motion that calls for financial responsibility, but in the process it actually congratulates the Chief Minister on some of the things that he has done. He cannot even bring himself to congratulate himself because he thinks there might be a trap in it and the wicked Liberal Party is going to do him in, come what may.
The whole thing with the budget, as my colleagues have dwelt on at great length, is that it is about sound financial management year on year, which is hard work. It is about keeping your eye on the ball. I noticed in an address today by the Hon Andrew Robb in relation to vocational training some of the things that he said about the constant slug of sound financial management. He said in his speech today:
A successful company does two things; it pays a healthy dividend to its shareholders, and it takes from the profits and invests in the future. An unsuccessful company pays little or no dividend because they don’t have profits to distribute and they borrow to keep the company afloat.
In 1996 the Howard government took over an unsuccessful business with little or no dividends being paid, and a $96 billion government debt requiring yearly interest repayments of $8.5 billion. Yet, today we are paying Australians healthy dividends and investing heavily in the future.
Just as the creation of a highly successful mining company doesn’t come easily, so too the key measures that have enabled the economy to be in such strong shape—the tough fiscal measures to pay off that $96 billion debt, the budget reforms, the waterfront reforms, the tax reform, the workplace relations reforms, the superannuation reforms, the Future Fund, independent contractor legislation—
the list goes on—
have been very hard fought.
Getting the economy in order and keeping it in order is a hard fought business. But what we have here and what we have seen in successive years of Stanhope government is profligacy. What we had with the previous Labor government, which Mr Stanhope took great pains to avoid talking about this morning, was profligacy. When the ACT was set up, the commonwealth gave us money in the bank. When Kate Carnell became the Treasurer in 1995, not only had all that money disappeared from the bank, but also the operating loss for that year was $344 million. When they put together the budget soon after the 1995 election the operating loss, courtesy of the Follett government, was $344 million.
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