Page 220 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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MR SMYTH: Yes, page 14, staffing and organisational efficiencies. What are they? Better targeting of services; what will they be? Other savings; what are they? The detail is not there. The community has got a right to that detail. This is a reasonable way to get it, through a motion. You can be a bit glib and say, “Yes, I’ll quote you some page numbers.” I have read the report, same as you. I know there is certain information in there but the community is entitled to more information. We get a little bit of a flick, but at the bottom line, at the end of the day, it is taxpayer that pays for this; so we need to keep that in mind.
He, of course, went into the standard Labor attack: this has all been caused by the Liberals. There was absolutely no acknowledgement that the mismanagement of the Australian economy under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, the huge debts that they racked up and the 14,457 jobs that will go as a consequence of their action. There was no acknowledgement of that. It is part of that fiscal consolidation. We will just write that period off. We will not talk about it. You just ignore the damage done and the fact that at the end of the day somebody at the end has got to bring the budget back into surplus. At some stage there must be a surplus but there is now acknowledgement of that.
Then he says, “Go to page 7 and look at our record. Look at our general government sector net operating balance history. It is a beautiful blue line. Apart from the GFC bit where we were not responsible, it is all these wonderful surpluses.” If I remember rightly, this Labor government has only ever budgeted for two surpluses. They have certainly had more but I would suspect, looking at the period 2001-02 through to about 2007-08, that you were simply riding on the back of the Howard government, their achievements and an economy that was strong. The reaped the dividend of the economic reforms that Keating started and that Howard and Costello continued.
Dr Bourke: And you blame us for the bad times.
MR SMYTH: You have got to take the good with the bad. You have got to give credit where credit is due. I will give credit to Keating for what he started and to Howard and Costello for continuing it. It is a shame you cannot give the credit where it is due. I instance the reforms of the GST and the rivers of gold that appeared and the property boom that occurred under the Howard government. That is represented by those peaks in the positive. Your period, Treasurer, is all mainly negative. Look at that. It is all a big dive. Yes, Andrew becomes Treasurer and it dives. Andrew is still the Treasurer, it still stays below. We are going to wait now for 2016-17 for a mythical return to surplus. We will see.
The Treasurer talked about the credit rating. He talked about the credit rating. There is concern about the credit rating in circles where people are saying if they are going to build a stadium, if they are going to build a subacute hospital and if they continue to go ahead with the capita metro of which the Treasurer has said that there is no price to big that will stop capital metro—
Mr Hanson: Just phase 1.
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